PhD studies in human rights

Friday, 7 September 2007

Marty Submits Brief to US Supreme Court in El Masry case

Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who has investigated secret detentions on behalf of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), today submitted a brief to the US Supreme Court arguing that ‘virtually nothingÈ remains secret concerning the mistaken kidnapping of German citizen Khaled El-Masri by the CIA. The US government’s contention that state secrets would be revealed if the case was heard is therefore ‘wholly unwarranted’, Marty says in his amicus curiae brief . ‘It would be contrary to the purpose of the state secrets doctrine (...) to allow the US government to shield its clearly wrongful acts on the basis of that doctrine’, writes Marty, arguing that El-Masri should be given the chance to prove his allegations in an American court, as promised by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a December 2005 press conference.

El-Masri spent five months in secret jails in Skopje and Kabul before being released blind-folded in an Albanian forest after it was realised he had been kidnapped in error. He is seeking damages for his illegal abduction and detention but lower courts have ruled that his claims cannot be heard without compromising US national security. The Supreme Court is soon to decide on his appeal.

The full brief is available at: http://www.mediafire.com/?1xzxdqztgyz

Recent publications of interest

The latest issue of the International Review of the Red Cross has an article by David Forsythe, who is a long-time associate of the Irish Centre for Human Rights. Most recently, Professor Forsythe gave a keynote presentation at the conference on the United Nations Charter bodies that the Irish Centre cosponsored with the University of Potsdam and Hebrew University, held in Potsdam in July 2007. See:

David P. Forsythe, ‘The ICRC: a unique humanitarian protagonist’, (2007) 865 International Review of the Red Cross 63 (available at http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/review-865-p63)

The latest issue of Human Rights Quarterly has an interesting article on human rights in China: Ming Wan, ‘Human Rights Lawmaking in China: Domestic Politics, International Law, and International Politics’, (2007) 29 Human Rights Quarterly 727 (available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_rights_quarterly/v029/29.3wan.pdf

Public Lecture on the Genocide Convention at Cardozo

On 20 September 2007, at 18h00, I will be giving a public lecture entitled 'The Genocide Convention: Where Are We Now?' at Cardozo School of Law, in New York City, where I am a visiting professor for the semester. Here is the poster: http://www.mediafire.com/?bmse2nmw0eb. It is under the auspices of the Programme in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies here. I don't expect any of you to fly over for the occasion (although you are most welcome), but perhaps you know people in NYC and you can inform me them of this.

Thursday, 6 September 2007

Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture

Proceedings of a recent conference on the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention AGainst Torture, which creates new implementation mechanisms, are now available on line: http://bristol.ac.uk/law/research/centres-themes/opcat/docs.html

Tuesday, 4 September 2007

Venice Film Festival and Course on Human Rights and Cinema

Sorry for the silence of the past week. As most of you know, for the past three years I have been involved in delivering the academic programme at the summer school on Cinema and Human Rights, offered by the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, in conjunction with the Venice Film Festival. My main contribution is a series of lectures on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I give using a powerpoint presentation that links provisions of the UDHR with films. Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/?eqkk9jmi1cz
But I also have to tell you about the fabulous film that I saw last Friday at the Venice Film Festival. Brian de Palma (Scarfare, the Untouchables, etc.) presented his latest film, Redacted, which is about war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq. I think it may be the most powerful anti-war film ever produced. This is all the more important because the film is produced during the war, and may contribute to its end. Most anti-war films tend to arrive once the fighting has stopped (All Quiet on the Western Front, La Grande illusion, Platoon, etc.) I hope you will all get the chance to see this film. We gave de Palma a 10-minute standing ovation.

Friday, 24 August 2007

New publication on minority rights

Minority Rights Group recently sent me its latest report: http://www.minorityrights.org/?lid=1198. Entitled Minority Rights: The Key to Conflict Prevention, it is a useful contribution to the literature.

Darfur and the numbers game

For some time now I have had an interest in how human rights violations are counted. There is a debate going on right now because of alleged exaggerations in the number of victims in Darfur. You can find a number of articles on this by googling. For a start, here is something the BBC ran a few days ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6951672.stm

Louise Arbour on Responsibility to Protect

I just came across a talk that the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations in Jun 2007: http://www.cfr.org/publication/13580/preventing_mass_atrocities_rush_transcript_federal_news_service.html?breadcrumb=%2Fissue%2F68%2Fhumanitarian_intervention
Of particular interest is the link she makes between the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, which is recognised in the 2005 Outcome Document of the Summit of Heads of State and Government, and the discussion of the duty to prevent genocide in the recent judgment of the International Court of Justice in Bosnia v. Serbia.

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

Progress report on ICC

I am currently attending a conference on the International Criminal Court, hosted by the Mexican Department of Foreign Affairs and our colleagues at Iberamericano University, Mexico City. My presentation was an evaluation of the work of the Prosecutor after five years. Here is the powerpoint presentation: http://www.mediafire.com/?9j7j7i2fkpi

Death penalty abolition campaign at UN General Assembly

At this year's General Assembly session, the EU is attempting to secure the adoption of a resolution on abolition of the death penalty. Previous attempts, in 1994 and 1999, were unsuccessful. But many countries have abolished the death penalty since then, and it is believed that we may have turned the corner.
Amnesty International has prepared a background paper on the subject, which I have posted at: http://www.mediafire.com/?9vhszxztz4m
In addition, Amnesty is asking everyone to sign a petition: http://www.worldcoalition.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10 .
The petition will be presented to the President of the General Assembly on World Day against the Death Penalty, 10 October 2007. Please circulate this widely. The petition will also be posted shortly at: http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/APROweb.nsf/pages/adpan.

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.