PhD studies in human rights

Saturday, 28 February 2009

Special Tribunal for Lebanon to Open Tomorrow

The fourth United Nations ‘international’ criminal court, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, is due to open for business tomorrow. It has its headquarters in Leidschendam, which is near The Hague. Its subject-matter jurisdiction is confined to the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in 2005, and it will be applying the provisions of Lebanese law. The Tribunal has a website (http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/lebanon/tribunal/), but it has not been brought up to date in almost a year.
There has as yet been no public announcement of the Tribunal’s personnel, but it is widely believed that the judiciary will include Prof. Antonio Cassese (see photo), who was first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as another former judge of the Tribunal, Bert Swart, and a defense lawyer who practiced there, Howard Morrison. Four Lebanese nationals will also be named to sit as judges. The Prosecutor is a Canadian, Daniel Bellemare, according to the press briefing on the United Nations website yesterday (http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2009/db090227.doc.htm). The Secretary-General is to make a statement tomorrow on the matter.

Useful International Law Blog

Check out the International Law Observer (www.internationallawobserver.eu), which has many interesting and original comments on issues in public international law.
Thanks to Dominik Zimmermann

Friday, 27 February 2009

Two New Judgments of Note

In Prosecutor v. Milutinovic et al., five leading Serb officials in the Milosevic regime were convicted of crimes against humanity in relation to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in 1999 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia yesterday. For the press release, judgment summary and the judgment itself, which runs to more than 2,000 pages: http://www.icty.org/sid/10070. Milutinovic himself, who was the president of Serbia at the time, was acquitted altogether. Congratulations to the defence counsel, Eugene O’Sullivan, who has been assisted throughout this case, may I add, by two brilliant graduates of the LLM programme at the Irish Centre for Human Rights.
Also, the Special Court for Sierra Leone has issued its judgment in the three-defendant case involving the Revolutionary United Front. I couldn’t find the judgment on the website of the Court., but someone has sent me the official summary: http://www.mediafire.com/?inmhdn7toei. There is an intriguing reference to a dissent by Judge Pierre Boutet, but nothing in the summary to indicate what that might consist of.
Thanks to Colin Smith.

Genocide in International Law (2nd ed.)

The second edition of my book Genocide in International Law, The Crime of Crimes, is now available from Cambridge University p
Press: http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521719001. It consists of a very major revision of the first edition, which appeared in 2000. The second edition reviews the very important case law on genocide since 2000, the substantial academic contributions and the political developments, such as recognition of the doctrine of the responsibility to protect.

Thursday, 26 February 2009

Special Rapporteur Philip Alston Calls for International Criminal Court to Prosecute in Keny

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, has just completed a mission to Kenya. He recommends, amongst other things, that the International Criminal Court take up issues of summary execution in the country:
http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/EAFBE45849510C0EC125756800534815?opendocument
Thanks to Maria Veraki.

Death Penalty Proving Costly for US States

An article in yesterday’s New York Times (http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/25/america/25death.php) reports how US lawmakers are increasingly looking to the argument that capital punishment is a very costly means of law enforcement. One who is arguing for its abolition on this basis, according to the report, is Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, to whom the National University of Ireland, Galway awarded an honorary doctorate last June.
Because of the complex and often unending procedural issues involved in death penalty litigation, it is a very expensive process. The cost argument becomes more attractive in tough times. The article reports a death penalty supporter arguing that it is impossible to measure the social benefit of those who have been deterred from killing because of the death penalty. But this is a very weak argument, because of the poor evidence showing that capital punishment has a deterrent effect that is superior to that of long-term imprisonment.
Maryland in fact provides a good example of this. Do you recall the famous 'belt-way snipers' from several years ago. This was a strange team of serial killers who murdered people at random in and around Washington. They were called the 'belt-way snipers' because the killings all took place within a few kilometers of the belt-way, which is the ring road around Washington.
Now, Washington has no death penalty, whereas Maryland and Virginia do. Would you be surprised to learn that virtually all of the killilngs took place in Maryland and Virginia, and not Washington? If the death penalty is such a deterrent, why didn't these two mad serial killers simply drive a few kilometers in the other direction and put themselves outside the threat of execution?

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Belgium Files Proceedings Against Senegal Alleging

Belgium has filed proceedings against Senegal at the International Court of Justice charging a violation of international law by a failure to either try or extradite the former Chadian ruler, Hissan Habré, who has been living in Senegal for many years: http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/144/15052.pdf?PHPSESSID=fb2b1be847f114ca31179b66668fd5b6. Belgium wants to prosecute Habré for crimes against humanity and torture. Belgium also seeks provisional measures requiring Senegal to retain custody over Habré pending the proceedings. A fascinating new chapter in international human rights law and international criminal law has been opened by the Belgian application. It concerns application of the Convention Against Torture as well as the scope of customary international law.
Thanks to Fidelma Donlon.

Bashir Warrant Decision on 4 March

The Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court has announced it will issue its decision on the application for an arrest warrant against President El Bashir of Sudan on 4 March 2009: http://www2.icc-cpi.int/NR/exeres/4B03F046-6792-40D7-B357-7D14CB723120.htm.
By my count, that is 232 days after the arrest warrant application was filed. Issuance of an arrest warrant is governed by article 58 of the Rome Statute. The Pre-Trial Chamber must be 'satisfied' that there exist 'reasonable grounds to believe that the person has committed a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court'.

Doctorate for Jeroen Temperman

Jeroen Temperman successfully defended his doctoral thesis yesterday. The title is: ‘State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law: Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance’. Jeroen began studying a little more than two years ago, which in itself makes the accomplishment impressive. The thesis is a fascinating and thorough review of the relationship between States and religion, taken from a human rights perspective.
the thesis was supervised by Prof. Joshua Castellino, formerly of the Irish Centre for Human Rights and now head of the law school at the University of Middlesex, in London. The external examiner was Dr Nazila Ghanea, of the University of Oxford.
Jeroen leaves the Irish Centre for Human Rights this weekend to take up a position as lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. He is planning to live on a houseboat on a canal in the middle of Amsterdam. Since we began awarding PhD degrees, slightly more than four years ago, nineteen students have graduated. By my count, thirteen of them are working as university lecturers, with the others engaged in employment appropriate to their level of education. The photo shows, from left, Jeroen, Nazila Ghanea, myself and Joshua Castellino.

Friday, 13 February 2009

Alison des Forges

Alison des Forges was on the plane that crashed in Buffalo last night. An historian by training, Alison had spent her life working on human rights issues in central Africa, and especially Rwanda. She was a frequent expert witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and testified in many cases, including the Bagosora case (for which the judgment was issued a few days ago). Alison was awarded a Macarthur 'genius grant', and received many other honours. Her book, Leave None to Tell the Story, is the authoritative work on the Rwandan genocide.

I first worked with Alison when we were members of a human rights fact-finding mission to Rwanda in January 1993. The report of the Commission that we belonged to, and of which Alison was the unofficial leader, warned of genocide in Rwanda some fifteen months before it began. She also led a mission to Burundi in January 1994, in which I participated. Her death is a terrible loss to all of us. I want to express my deepest condolences to her husband and family.

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.