PhD studies in human rights: Shawan Jabarin Denied Right to Travel to Galway

Thursday 18 November 2010

Shawan Jabarin Denied Right to Travel to Galway

Tomorrow, we begin two days of events to mark the tenth anniversary of activities of the Irish Centre for Human Rights. One of our honoured guests was to be Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian NGO Al Haq. Shawan completed our LLM programme some years ago, and we will honour him at a banquet tomorrow as a distinguished graduate. Alas, Israel will not allow Shawan the right to travel. Yesterday, the Israeli embassy in Dublin - cloaked by diplomatic immunity - issued a nasty statement accusing him of terrorism, based upon secret evidence allegedly presented to courts in Israel but which Shawan has never seen and cannot contest.
The Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Micheal Martin, responded today in the Dail (one of the houses of the Irish Parliament) to a question about Shawan:

Question No. 13

Parliamentary Question - Dept Details

To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs his views on the case of Shawan Jabarin, the director of the human rights agency Al-Haq who is a graduate of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway and who hopes to travel to an anniversary event for this centre in Galway but at present will not be in a position to do so due to the travel ban imposed by the Israeli State; if efforts will be made in order to assist his passage; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

- Jack Wall.

For ORAL answer on Thursday, 18th November, 2010.

Ref No: 43161/10 Lottery: 12

Shawan Jabarin is the Director of Al-Haq, an important and respected Palestinian human rights organisation which is supported by Irish Aid. Through our Mission in Ramallah my Department has regular contacts with Al Haq and with Mr. Jabarin personally.

He has been consistently refused permission to leave Palestine since June 2006, when he returned from a fellowship at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at NUI Galway. Ireland and other EU partners have made representations to allow him to travel to human rights events in Europe, but without success. The Israeli authorities have insisted that they have serious security concerns in relation to Mr. Jabarin, and this view has been upheld by Israeli courts, although the evidence on which it was based has remained secret.

On this occasion Mr. Jabarin has been refused permission to travel to the tenth anniversary event of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, which takes place tomorrow, and I understand he intends to participate by video link. We will continue to urge that he be allowed to travel and represent human rights concerns in Palestine.

2 comments:

mihai martoiu ticu said...: They are afraid that he might blow himself up at a Pizza Hut in Galway.; 18 November 2010 at 18:50
Evelyne said...: I am glad you are posting this here. I sincerely hope Mr. Jabarin and other Palestinians are able to travel if they have legitimate plans to do so. Unfortunately, it seems that he is not the only individual with problems of this kind. One of my very first jobs involved obtaining visas for Palestinian/Jordanian civil society members to travel to an international anti-corruption conference in Manama, Bahrain. I will never forget the individual who – after days of trying- finally got a permit to use Ben Gurion airport, but only for a few hours and four days prior to the conference. It was only by chance that I actually had his entry visa for Bahrain since I couldn’t cancel his visa application anyways. Determined as he was, he jumped into a taxi, spent three days in the transit zone of the airport until he had a flight and he made it to our conference.

Half Europe panicked when we had the volcanic ash cloud in spring, but for others, the skies, rails and roads are still closed for different reasons.

I hope at least the video link will work well so that Mr. Jabarin is able to talk about the work of al Haq.; 18 November 2010 at 19:16

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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

Thursday 18 November 2010

Shawan Jabarin Denied Right to Travel to Galway

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