PhD studies in human rights: Durban Review Conference

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Durban Review Conference

I've been in Geneva all week, and managed to spend some time at the Durban Review Conference on Monday. Much of this disaster could have been avoided. For starters, those countries that boycotted the Conference - Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Israel and the US - provoked an impossible situation. See the press conference that the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General delivered on Monday: http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/7BE4F998E3B50A31C125759E006475BC?opendocument. As the High Commissioner explains, last Friday they agreed upon an outcome document, but then didn’t participate anyway. This must have seemed like a trick to those who made compromises on the final text. There was a quid pro quo: reach agreement on a final text in return for unanimous participation. So all of this set the stage for Ahmedinijad’s speech on Monday. The BBC have provided a full translation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8010747.stm. It is vintage Ahmedinijad. I’ve heard many saying it is full of Holocaust denial and anti-semitism, so it is well worth reading the actual speech before making up one’s mind about what he actually said. The real pity here is that he was the only head of State who came to speak to such an important conference. Barack Obama should have been here. This was the opportunity for the United States to reclaim its position within the international human rights system. Unfortunately, on this issue at least, it seems to have simply continued a policy that was first developed by the Bush administration.

The outcome document was formally adopted yesterday:

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DRCAdoptsFinalOutcomeDocument.aspx

4 comments:

Seána Moran said...: I found Ahmedinijad's speech very inspiring and not one bit anti-semitist.; 26 April 2009 at 22:45
Seána Moran said...: I found Ahmedibijad's speech very inspiring. Thank you for posting it.; 26 April 2009 at 22:46
Cory said...: I'm curious to know what about his speech inspired you.

I also wonder how you don't see the Holocaust being described as a "pretext" or something that was "exploited," as though the whole thing were some kind of a ploy, to not be antisemetic.

Similarly, the contention that somehow Zionists control the world is little more than a modern iteration of the age old antisemtic claims of Jewish global domination plots.

These are just two examples of the hate in this speech. Never mind that these impassioned denunciations come from a man who has called for the destruction of a UN member state and who pursues, as a matter of policy, the persecution of religious minorities in his country.; 1 May 2009 at 16:24
Getahun said...: I wonder how we failed to understand the very essence of internationlal community and the values up on which it has been established and strife to promote. At least a quick reference to the preamble of UN charter and Art 1 of same makes it clear that human dignity, justice, peace, security are central which shall be based on universal cooperation and freindly relations amon the nations of the world. UN is the forum for nations to negotiate on this values in a peaceful and mutual ways. It is place for resolving differences and formulating viable actions. It is not meant for propagation of one's ideological perceptions and religious beliefs. That can be carried out at home. But at UN nations meet for common values or interests. If not, it undermines the organisation's purposes enshrined under the charter. it is posible to criticise each other but not in such a way that promotes division and antagonism. in light of this I am of the view that the Iranian president's speach is out of context and filled with his own ideological haterage, but I do not think it is the view of Iranian nation. More importantly, it missed the purpose of that meeting and thus a failure.

Getahun
LLM student; 3 May 2009 at 11:05

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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.

PhD studies in human rights

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Durban Review Conference

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