PhD studies in human rights

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Guantanamo Blog

The Oxford University Press blog has an interesting post ( http://blog.oup.com/2009/04/guantanamo-2/ ) from Karen Greenberg, author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days, about the information that the general public is given about Guantanamo Bay and the human rights violations that are occurring there. Greenberg reflects on the image of Guantanamo that is transmitted through cable television specials that, while attempting to show the situation from all sides, don’t provide any sort of reality check for viewers.
Thanks to Megan Branch

Via Campesina

Last weekend, while attending a meeting in Bruges, I bumped into a former student of ours who now works with an international organization of peasant farmers called La Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org). Via Campesina actively work on promoting the right to food as well as the rights of peasants (to land, natural resources, seeds etc).
Thanks to Fergal Anderson.

Monday, 6 April 2009

Human Rights Coins

Several European Union States have issued coins that are commemorative of human rights. Last year, Belgium, Finland, Portugal and Italy issued 2 euro coins on the 60th anniversary of the University Declaration of Human Rights. France has recently released a 10 euro silver coin for the 60th anniversary of the European Court of Human Rights, shown in the photo. They can be purchased from coin dealers, such as Electa Collections (http://www.electacollections.com/default.aspx?langid=2) and Yvert et Tellier (http://www.yvert.com/F_frame.html?http://www.yvert.com/), and make lovely gifts.

Human Rights and Climate Change

At our expert group meeting in Galway in November, hosted by the Irish Centre for Human Rights in partnership with UNESCO and the University of Amsterdam, we considered how issues like climate change were relevant to the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress, set out in article e27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Not much is yet available on the issues concerning human rights and climate change. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has now produced a useful report: http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G09/103/44/PDF/G0910344.pdf?OpenElement

Friday, 3 April 2009

Iowa Supreme Court Upholds Same-Sex Marriage

The Iowa Supreme Court today found that the 1998 stautory prohibition on same-sex marriage violates the Iowa Constitution. The Court's opinion is available at http://www.desmoinesregister.com/assets/pdf/D213209243.PDF.
Thanks to Brian Farrell.

Thursday, 2 April 2009

Defamation of Religions

The latest salvo in the debate about freedom of expression is the resolution adopted last week by the Human Rights Council entitled 'Combating defamation of religions'. Here is the text of the draft, which I can only presume was adopted without change: http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/G09/126/13/PDF/G0912613.pdf?OpenElement.
Thanks to Maria Veraki.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Canadian Perspective

The Canadian government has published its long-awaited response to the corporate social responsibility roundtables held in Canada in 2006-2007. Taking a largely preventive and capacity-building approach, the Government committed itself inter alia to promoting a number of normative processes among Canadian extractive companies (the IFC Performance Standards, the Volontary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the Global Reporting Initiative) and to establishing an 'Office of the Extractive Sector CSR Counsellor to assist stakeholders in the resolution of CSR issues pertaining to the activities of Canadian extractive sector companies abroad'. On the legal aspects, see pp. 14-15. http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/ds/csr-strategy-rse-stategie.aspx.
Thanks to Bruce Broomhall.

Harsh Assessment of International Criminal Court Prosecutor

Alex de Waal and Julie Flint have published a very harsh assessment of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the current issue of World Affairs: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Spring/full-DeWaalFlint.html. Alex has a blog, where comments on the piece will be posted:
www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur.

Bush Released; Problem Solved in Houston

The source for yesterday's blog - that is, April first - proved unreliable. A relative newcomer to The Hague, my source went to a coffee shop for breakfast before leaking the exciting but apocryphal story of the Bush arrest. They had run out of coffee, so my source had something else.

Readers of the blog know my pedagogical inclinations, and should appreciate that even if the facts were mistaken, the law in yesterday's post is sound.

By the way, there was record feedback, and many were taken in, if only briefly. Who says there's no humour in torture, war crimes and genocide?

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

Bush Arrested, Will Stand Trial for Torture at International Criminal Court

From a confidential source in the Registry of the International Criminal Court, I have just learned that former United States President George Bush was kidnapped yesterday by Mexican bounty hunters, who managed to overwhelm the Secret Service agents at his ranch in Texas. A few hours ago, he was covertly transported across the border into Mexico. Government authorities there are holding him under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. Bush has been charged for his role in torturing prisoners in Afghanistan, which is a State party to the Rome Statute. The Court has jurisdiction over all crimes committed on the territory of a State party (art. 12(2). A sealed arrest warrant was issued by the Pre-Trial Chamber I against Bush earlier this week.
In a few hours, Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is expected to publicly announce the arrest. He will explain that the recent decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber authorizing the arrest of President Bashir of Sudan means that thereis now no immunity for any Head of State or former Head of State: http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/exeres/4C445705-1300-4D94-9502-E42067474468.htm. In support of the lawfulness of the kidnapping and its effect on proceedings, he will cite a judgment of the United States Supreme Court involving the abduction of a suspect from Mexico as authority: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-712.ZS.html.
Bush is being held in a secret location, and will be flown to The Hague later today on a private jet that has been made available to the Court by President Chavez of Venezuela.
I’ve managed to obtain a copy of the draft statement that the Court will issue later today: http://www.mediafire.com/?mzafzkly3nn.
Thanks to ‘deep throat’.

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.