PhD studies in human rights: Irish Foreign Minister Condemns Gaza Violations of Human Rights, Supports Goldstone Commission

Saturday, 6 March 2010

Irish Foreign Minister Condemns Gaza Violations of Human Rights, Supports Goldstone Commission

In a speech delivered to the 'high level segment' of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva earlier this week, Ireland's Foreign Minister Micheál Martin criticized human rights abuses in Gaza resulting from the Israeli blockade. He also indicated support for the Goldstone Commission, which found that war crimes had been committed during the Gaza conflict in late 2008 and early 2009. Here are the relevant passages, taken from the full speech:

Last week, I paid a visit to Gaza. I was the first Foreign Minister of an EU member State to do so in over a year. My purpose in travelling was a humanitarian one, to see for myself the impact of a blockade which has now been imposed on the people of Gaza for some two-and-a-half years. The situation there is truly a humanitarian crisis, with a growing proportion of Gazans receiving insufficient food each day and some 80% of the population now subsisting below the poverty line. My visit reinforced my belief that the conditions under which the people of Gaza have to live as a result of the blockade are inhumane and utterly unacceptable. Normal international standards of human rights are not being respected. It is completely unjust that an entire population should be subjected to medieval siege conditions of this kind. As this situation strengthens extremism and undermines the voices of moderation, it is also wholly counter-productive in terms of achieving the wider political progress which is so urgently needed in the Middle East.
I believe that the credibility of the international community is at stake in Gaza. We must step up pressure for a lifting of the blockade and the opening of the border crossings to normal commercial and humanitarian traffic.
I am also convinced that accountability for the most serious offences which occurred during the Gaza conflict in late 2008/early 2009 must be ensured. That is why Ireland voted for the Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly last November on the Goldstone Report and why we similarly supported the Resolution adopted last week reiterating the call on both sides to conduct credible and independent investigations. While we do not endorse every recommendation in the Goldstone Report, we do recognise it as a serious and very important contribution to our understanding of what took place in Gaza and southern Israel and of the need to
ensure some form of appropriate accountability for actions which occurred.

See also the video of the speech.
Among the 'Western European and other Group', with which Ireland is associated in the United Nations, I believe it is the only State to have taken such a public position.
Minister Martin also expressed concern about the human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, North Korea and Burma.

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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

Saturday, 6 March 2010

Irish Foreign Minister Condemns Gaza Violations of Human Rights, Supports Goldstone Commission

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