PhD studies in human rights: Tenth Anniversary of Irish Centre for Human Rights

Monday 22 November 2010

Tenth Anniversary of Irish Centre for Human Rights

From left, David Scheffer, David Norris and Doug Cassel.

Over the past weekend, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Actually, it has its origins in the early 1980s, with Kevin Boyle and Mary Robinson, who launched a unit at the National University of Ireland, Galway in response to a general appeal from the Council of Europe. Both Kevin and Mary send video messages to the gala dinner we held here on Friday evening.
The two main events were the dinner and a conference on the theme of 'New Rights, Forgotten Rights'. Keynote speakers were Prof. Andrew Clapham, who addressed questions relating to the spread of human rights to non-state entities, and Prof. Leila Sadat, who spoke on draft Convention on Crimes Against Humanity.
Friday's gala dinner was a wonderful celebration, hosted by the exuberant Senator David Norris. It was fabulously organised by Yvonne McDermott, one of our doctoral students. There were nearly 200 people in attendance, many of them former students who travelled great distances to be back in Galway and to share in the infectious spirit of the Centre.
The highlight of the dinner was a remote skype meeting with Shawan Jabarin, graduate of the 2004-5 LLM class and now the director of El Haq, the very distinguished Palestinian NGO. The Israeli government would not let Shawan travel to Galway to receive an award from the Centre. As always, Shawan inspired us enormously with his courage, his modesty and his warmth.
There were many honoured guests and long-time friends of the Centre in attendance, including Judge Daniel Nsereko of the International Criminal Court, Prof. Emmanuel Decaux of the Université de Paris II, Prof. David Scheffer of Northwestern University, Prof. Joshua Castellino and Dr Nadia Bernaz from Middlesex University, and Prof. Doug Cassel of the Notre Dame Centre for Civil and Human Rights. We were piped in for dinner by Don Ferencz. The President of NUI Galway, Jim Browne, made a wonderful opening speech. Music was provided by Orna Joyce and Rick Lines, both of them students currently enrolled in our programmes.
We should get a full report and guest list together with photographs of the event up on the Centre's website in the coming days.

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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

Monday 22 November 2010

Tenth Anniversary of Irish Centre for Human Rights

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