United Nations War Crimes Commission

The School of Oriental and African Studies is hosting a conference in London on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Yesterday, Justice Richard Goldstone delivered the keynote address. Speakers from a range of disciplines, including law, politics and history, are presenting papers on the activities of the Commission whose role in the early development of international criminal law was so important.

Richard Goldstone, centre, with Don Ferencz, right, and myself at yesterday's session of the Conference.

Information about the conference is available here. The papers will be published next year in a special issue of the Criminal Law Forum.
The main organisers of the conference, Dan Plesch and Shanti Sattler, have managed to secure the opening of the United Nations archives with respect to the Commission. They have their own great website on the Commission. Many of the relevant documents are now available in the legal tools section of the website of the International Criminal Court. The have also produced pdfs of the official history of the Commission, published in 1948.