PhD studies in human rights: CIA Renditions, Security Council Blacklists

Saturday 29 March 2008

CIA Renditions, Security Council Blacklists

I spent yesterday attending a fascinating conference in Athens on human rights and counter-terrorism measures, jointly organised by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights (http://www.mfhr.gr/?ln=1). The stars of the conference were the Swiss senator, Dick Marty, and his key researcher, Gavin Simpson (who, incidentally, worked with me on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where he was as indispensable to our activities as he has been to Senator Marty.
The two of them described their fascinating detective work, tracing the rendition flights throughout Europe with the help of a network of plane-spotters and more than a few ‘whistle-blowers’. It is an amazing dimension of human rights work that we rarely hear about. The very detailed and convincing reports that they prepared are available on the website of the Parliamentary Assembly: http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/NewsManager/EMB_NewsManagerView.asp?ID=2974.
The afternoon session, at which I spoke, focused on the issue of blacklists. These are authorised by the Security Council, in a series of resolutions, which pretty much puts them out of the reach of judicial review. According to Senator Marty, everyone on the blacklists is a Muslim. The consequence of being put on a blacklist is that your assets are frozen, and you cannot travel. Senator Marty has also done a great report on this subject, which reviews the frustrating attempts to convince courts to step in and impose a bit of rule of law on the UN Security Council: http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/NewsManager/EMB_NewsManagerView.asp?ID=3507.
Gavin is now based in New York, where he is working as a consultant for One World Research, which says it conducts ‘public interest investigations and human rights research: http://www.oneworldresearch.com/about.html.

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William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr Yvonne McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.