International Law Prof Blog

Britain Triggers Notice Under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty

The United Kingdom today gave notice under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that pursuant to a democratic vote, it was leaving the European Union.

Here's the text of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty:

Article 50

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

And just what would that procedure be under Article 49 to rejoin after it withdraws from the European Union?

Article 49

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by an absolute majority of its component members. The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. The conditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account.

The British Ambassador to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft, made a statement confirming that although Britain was starting two years of negotiations to leave the EU, it would still be part of Europe and part of the UN Security Council.  Click here to see the video of Ambassador Rycroft.

(mew)

 

Save the Date: Annual CSLSA Conference

The annual conference of the Central States Law Schools Association (CSLSA) will be held at Southern Illinois University School of Law on October 6-7, 2017.  The keynote speaker for the conference will be Dean Michael Hunter Schwartz.  Watch this space or the CSLSA website for the call for papers.

(cgb)

International Criminal Court Adds Another Year to Congolese Vice President Bemba's 18-Year Sentence

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sentenced the former Congolese Vice-President, Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, to another year in prison and about $325,000 in fines for interfering with his trial.

Judges ordered the that the sentence be served consecutively to Mr. Bemba's existing 18-year sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Central African Republic between October 2002 and March 2003.

In their ruling, the judges ordered the fine to be paid within three months to the ICC and then transferred to the Trust Fund for Victims, according to a press release.

Mr. Bemba, along with two of the four other people accused, were found guilty in October “for having jointly committed the offences of intentionally corruptly influencing 14 defence witnesses, and presenting their false evidence to the court.”

Mr. Bemba was also found guilty of soliciting the giving of false testimony by the 14 defense witnesses and attempting to corruptly influence two defense witnesses.

These charges were in addition to the main ruling issued in March 2016, in which the ICC found Mr. Bemba guilty beyond reasonable doubt on two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and three counts of war crimes (murder, rape and pillaging) committed in the Central African Republic in 2002-2003.

Mr. Bemba had been the commander-in-chief of the former Congolese rebel group, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, as well as a vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the 2003-2006 transition.

(Adapted from a UN Press Release)

Duke is Hiring

Job Announcement:

Clinical Fellow/Supervising Attorney, International Human Rights Clinic, Duke University School of Law

Duke University School of Law seeks to fill a Clinical Fellow/Supervising Attorney position in its International Human Rights Clinic beginning in the Summer of 2017.

Duke Law has deep faculty, student and institutional engagement in human rights and international law. In addition to its International Human Rights Clinic launched in the Spring of 2014, the law school is home to a Center for International and Comparative Law and a Center on Law, Ethics, and National Security. It offers a joint JD-LLM in international and comparative law, has many student organizations relating to international law, and publishes the student-edited Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law.

The Clinical Fellow/Supervising Attorney will work closely with the Director of the International Human Rights Clinic. She or he will primarily help supervise student fieldwork in Clinic projects and participate in the planning and teaching of the Clinic advocacy seminar. The Clinical Fellow/Supervising Attorney will also work closely with the Director and other faculty to expand Duke Law’s experiential learning opportunities in international law, including through student placements in competitive summer and semester fellowships and externships in human rights and related fields. The individual appointed to the position will receive mentorship in teaching, scholarship, and human rights lawyering and will have an opportunity to work with the faculty affiliated with the Center for International and Comparative Law.

Applicants should have a minimum of two to five years of relevant experience. In addition to a record of, or demonstrated potential for, clinical teaching, advocacy, and intellectual engagement, the ideal candidate will have experience: as practicing lawyers or human rights advocates, developing practice- oriented courses, supervising students in fellowships or externships, working collaboratively with faculty, and other evidence of in-depth knowledge of and practical engagement in international human rights law and mechanisms.

The initial term of the appointment is expected to be two years. Salary and benefits will be commensurate with experience and competitive with similar fellowship positions at other top U.S. law schools.

Applicants should send a statement of interest and CV to Ali Prince at ali.prince@law.duke.edu by April 16, 2017.

Duke University and Duke University Health System is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing employment opportunity without regard to an individual's race, color, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, or disability.

Click here for more information.

Hat tip to Larry Helfer.

(mew)

Herzog Lecture on "Preventing and Punishing Crimes Against Humanity"

Preventing and Punishing Crimes Against Humanity

Speaker: Prof. Sean D. Murphy, Member, International Law Commission

Fred F. Herzog Memorial Lecture

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

The John Marshall Law School, 315 S. Plymouth Court, Chicago, Illinois

Meet and Greet to Follow the Lecture

"Crimes against humanity" are part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. These crimes include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and forcible transfer of a population, torture, rape, sexual slavery, and other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering. The International Law Commission has begun work on a Draft Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity. For the 2017 Herzog Memorial Lecture, Sean D. Murphy, a member of the International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur for the Project, will discuss the Commission's important work on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

The International Law Commission. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly established the International Law Commission to study and make recommendations that would encourage the "progressive development of international law and its codification." Its members are "persons of recognized competence in international law" who sit in their individual capacities and not as representatives of their governments.

Sean D. Murphy is a Professor at The George Washington University Law School and a leading authority on international law. He was recently re-elected to a second, five-year term on the International Law Commission.

Fred F. Herzog was born in 1907 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied law and in 1935 he became the youngest federal judge in Austria and the only Jewish judge in that country. Although appointed as a judge for life, he was removed from office in 1938 following the Nazi Anschluss of Austria. He escaped to Sweden and then to the United States, where he studied for an American law degree. He later became Dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and then The John Marshall Law School. He died in 2008 in Chicago at the age of 100.

Fred F. Herzog Memorial Lecture Series. The lecture series named in Dean Herzog's honor has included such notable speakers such as Hans Corell (Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations), Laurel Bellows (President of the American Bar Association, speaking on Human Trafficking), Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University (speaking on Combating Holocaust Denial), and Thomas Buergenthal (former Judge of the International Court of Justice and a survivor of the Nazi camps).

Who should attend? The lecture will be of great interest to lawyers and law students interested in international law and to all persons interested in preventing and punishing crimes against humanity.

There is no charge to attend the lecture.

(mew)

Global Legal Skills Conference Wraps Up in Mexico; Next GLS Conference Slated for Melbourne, Australia

The photo here shows some of the more than 120 participants who attended the 12th Global Legal Skills Conference at the Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey, Mexico. Participants came from more than 17 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Qatar, Romania, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The conference is the world's leading conference devoted to international legal skills education, including "Legal English" for non-native speakers of English.

This year's conference also included a bilingual contract negotiation workshop for U.S. law students who spoke Spanish. The students had an opportunity to negotiate contracts with law students from Mexico, to improve their Legal Spanish and to learn about negotiating styles in Latin America.

Social media posts for this year's conference can be found by searching for #GLS12FLDM.

Congratulations again to the individual winners of the 2017 Global Legal Skills Awards: Catherine Beck (Indiana University Department of English); Joan Blum (Boston College Law School); Lurene Contento (The John Marshall Law School-Chicago); Kim Holst (Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law); Matthew Homewood (Nottingham Trent University, England); Chantal Morton (Melbourne Law School); and Rebecca Schillings (Hamad bin Khalifa University College of Law and Public Policy, Qatar).

There were two institutional winners: the International Law Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Centro de Estudios sobre la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje del Derecho, A.C., in Monterrey, Mexico.

The 2017 Global Legal Skills Book Award went to Professors S.I. Strong, Katia Fach Gómez, and Laura Carballo Piñeiro for their book, Comparative Law for Spanish–English Speaking Lawyers: Legal Cultures, Legal Terms and Legal Practices (Edward Elgar Publishing 2017).

More information about the Global Legal Skills Awards can by found by clicking here.

The Global Legal Skills Conference was started by Professor Mark E. Wojcik of The John Marshall Law School, who served as a Co-Chair of thie year's conference. The GLS-12 Conference was held at the Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey, which twice before hosted the conference. The conference was also co-sponsored by the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico Department of Law (Mexico City), The John Marshall Law School (Chicago), and the University of Texas at Austin School of Law (Austin). Other cooperating entities included the American Bar Association Section of International Law (ABA-SIL) the International Law Institute, the International Law Students Association (ILSA), Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers, and the Teaching International Law Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA). The conference has been held several times in Chicago, three times in Mexico, twice in Costa Rica, twice in Italy, and once in Washington, D.C.

The next Global Legal Skills Conference will be held more than 18 months from now in Melbourne, Australia in December 2018.

Related articles

GLS-10 Scholarship Forum Underway

Early Bird Registration Deadline for the ABA Section of International Law Spring Meeting

Friday March 17th is the early bird registration deadline for the 2017 Spring Meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law in Washington, DC. The Spring Meeting is being held from April 25-29, 2017. Information about the meeting including a preliminary brochure, hotel reservation link, registration form, and online registration portal are posted at on the web at www.ambar.org/ILSpring2017. Any questions regarding the Spring Meeting can be directed to intlawmeetings@americanbar.org.

(mew)

Winners of the 2017 Global Legal Skills Awards Announced; Winners from Australia, Mexico, Qatar, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States

The 2017 Global Legal Skills Awards are being presented this week to individuals and institutions that have worked to promote global legal skills education. Awards are being presented in Monterrey, Mexico at the Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey, the host of the 12th Global Legal Skills Conference. A full list of winners from 2012 to 2017 can be found by clicking here.

Here are the 2017 GLS Award Winners:

Prof. M. Catherine Beck (Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indiana, United States) is recognized for creating the Legal English Program at the Indiana University Robert McKinney School of Law and for her support of global legal skills education. As a non-lawyer language specialist working in Legal English for more than 15 years, she has enhanced legal skills pedagogy for lawyers and law students who speak English as a second language. 

Prof. E. Joan Blum (Boston College Law School, Massachusetts, United States) is recognized for her years of teaching common law legal reasoning in the International Tax Program at Harvard Law School and later directing the Boston College Law Summer Institute for international lawyers, for her many publications in the field of legal writing education, for her service to the legal writing community, and for her work teaching legal reasoning and writing to judges, lawyers, and law students in the former Yugoslavia.

Prof. Lurene Contento (The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois, United States) is recognized for many contributions to legal skills education around the world, including her interactive and innovative teaching in China, Central America, and Central Europe. She has shared her knowledge and ideas to improve legal writing at many international conferences and through her award-winning publications. She has given years of dedicated service to the Global Legal Skills Conference Series, ensuring its success and a positive experience for the participants. Over the years she has helped thousands of law students, including many non-native speakers of English. She has also contributed to the professionalization of writing centers across the United States through her leadership as Chair of the Association of Legal Writing Specialists.

Prof. Kimberly Holst (Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, United States) is recognized for her efforts on projects that advance legal skills training in the United States and around the world. Her recent scholarship examines the importance of teaching reflective practices to law students so that they can develop those skills in law school and transfer them to practice. She also explores drafting techniques in the context of alternative dispute resolution. She has also served the legal writing community through her leadership of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research. She also enhanced the ability of presenters to make presentation proposals to the Global Legal Skills Conference, deepening the pool of presenters from around the world.

Matthew J. Homewood (Nottingham Trent University, England, United Kingdom) is recognized for his extensive experience in teaching and innovative curriculum development across a comprehensive range of undergraduate, post-graduate, professional, and practitioner programs. He is the Acting Head of Postgraduate Programmes at Nottingham Law School, England. He has significant expertise in the use of educational technology and the impact of such technologies on student engagement. Matthew recently received an HEA National Teaching Fellowship, the most prestigious individual award in the United Kingdom for excellence in teaching in higher education.

Dr. Chantal Morton (Melbourne Law School, Australia) is a senior lecturer at Melbourne Law School, where she develops resources and runs programs with a focus on legal writing and academic skills for law students and graduate law students. She is recognized for her energetic and innovative teaching and for working to improve legal skills education in Australia. Before joining the faculty at Melbourne Law School, she taught at the Osgoode Hall Law School (Canada) where she was also the Director of Career Services. Dr. Morton will be a Co-Chair of the 2018 Global Legal Skills Conference to be held in Melbourne, Australia.

Prof. Rebecca Schillings (Hamad bin Khalifa University College of Law and Public Policy, Qatar) is an Assistant Professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University’s College of Law and Public Policy (CLPP), where she is responsible for the legal skills component of the curriculum. She created a legal lab that engages law students in experimentation and interactive prototyping to develop new approaches to legal practice.

The International Law Institute in Washington, D.C. was established in 1955 as part of Georgetown University to assist in the building of governmental and economic institutions in post-war Europe. Over the years, the ILI has provided training and technical assistance to thousands of lawyers, judges, and other government officials. It was a pioneer in creating a course in Legal English, publishing the first U.S. Coursebook on Legal English, and in creating a course to introduce the U.S. legal system to law students and lawyers from outside the United States. The ILI is headquarted in Washington DC and has regional offices in Chile, Egypt, Nigeria, Turkey, and Uganda. [2017 Institutional Winner]

The Centro de Estudios sobre la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje del Derecho, A.C. in Monterrey, Mexico is an independent, non-profit research center. It is recognized for its dedication to improving the quality of the legal education and legal practice in Mexico. [2017 Institutional Winner]

Professors S.I. Strong (University of Missouri School of Law, United States), Katia Fach Gómez (University of Zaragoza, Spain) and Laura Carballo Piñeiro (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain), for their book, Comparative Law for Spanish–English Speaking Lawyers: Legal Cultures, Legal Terms and Legal Practices (Edward Elgar Publishing 2017). The book provides lawyers and law students who are conversationally fluent in both Spanish and English with the information and skills to undertake comparative legal research in their second language, and to facilitate communication with colleagues and clients in that language. [2017 GLS Book Award]

More information about the GLS Awards is available by clicking here.

#GLS12FLDM

The next Global Legal Skills Conference will be held in December 2018 in Melbourne, Australia. More information about the Global Legal Skills Conference is available by clicking here.

(mew)

Herzog Lecture on "Preventing and Punishing Crimes Against Humanity"

Preventing and Punishing Crimes Against Humanity

Speaker: Prof. Sean D. Murphy, Member, International Law Commission

Fred F. Herzog Memorial Lecture

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

The John Marshall Law School, 315 S. Plymouth Court, Chicago, Illinois

Meet and Greet to Follow the Lecture

"Crimes against humanity" are part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. These crimes include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and forcible transfer of a population, torture, rape, sexual slavery, and other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering. The International Law Commission has begun work on a Draft Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity. For the 2017 Herzog Memorial Lecture, Sean D. Murphy, a member of the International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur for the Project, will discuss the Commission's important work on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

The International Law Commission. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly established the International Law Commission to study and make recommendations that would encourage the "progressive development of international law and its codification." Its members are "persons of recognized competence in international law" who sit in their individual capacities and not as representatives of their governments.

Sean D. Murphy is a Professor at The George Washington University Law School and a leading authority on international law. He was recently re-elected to a second, five-year term on the International Law Commission.

Fred F. Herzog was born in 1907 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied law and in 1935 he became the youngest federal judge in Austria and the only Jewish judge in that country. Although appointed as a judge for life, he was removed from office in 1938 following the Nazi Anschluss of Austria. He escaped to Sweden and then to the United States, where he studied for an American law degree. He later became Dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and then The John Marshall Law School. He died in 2008 in Chicago at the age of 100.

Fred F. Herzog Memorial Lecture Series. The lecture series named in Dean Herzog's honor has included such notable speakers such as Hans Corell (Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations), Laurel Bellows (President of the American Bar Association, speaking on Human Trafficking), Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University (speaking on Combating Holocaust Denial), and Thomas Buergenthal (former Judge of the International Court of Justice and a survivor of the Nazi camps).

Who should attend? The lecture will be of great interest to lawyers and law students interested in international law and to all persons interested in preventing and punishing crimes against humanity.

There is no charge to attend the lecture.

(mew)

How to Take a Taxi from the Monterrey Airport to the 2017 Global Legal Skills Conference Hotel

Participants in the 12th Global Legal Skills Conference taking place this week have started to arrive in Monterrey, Mexico ("MTY"). Here is what you need to do.

1. Go through immigration and customs. After your flight lands in Monterrey, you'll go through immigration. Go to the lines on the right ("Extranjeros," which means foreigners or non-Mexican citizens). You'll pass through immigration, collect your luggage from the baggage claim, and go through customs. You'll be asked to push a button which randomly gives a red or green light. If you get the red light, you'll have to have your luggage inspected. If you get the green light, you will be on your way.
2. Get Mexican pesos from an ATM. After you leave the customs, go to the right (it's the only way you can go) until you pass some ATM machines on the left-hand side (look at the first picture). If you need pesos, then choose the ATM that feels right to you. Right now it's about 20 pesos to $1. This means that withdrawing $100US in pesos will give you just under 2,000 Mexican Pesos. The $ sign is used for both US dollars and for pesos, but you'll figure out which is which.
3. Find the taxi ticket machines and buy a ticket for a taxi to Zone 5. These machines will sell you a taxi ticket to ZONE 5 where the MS Millennium Hotel is located. You can use the machine in Spanish, English, or French. Pick whether you want a "sedan" or a "camioneta" (minivan). If you are four persons or fewer, pick the sedan.

 4. You then pick a company and buy a ticket for zone 5. There are six different taxi companies and they're all ok. Here are the prices for the sedan (assuming you are alone or that you have fewer than four people in your group).

• Ejecutivo $340 [about US$17.35]
• Contaxi $350 [about US$17.85]
• Golden $340 [about US$17.35]
• Suburban $345 [about US$17.60]
• TPA $330 [about US$16.85]
• Totsa $320 [about US$16.35]

You can see that the six companies are within $1.50 of each other. Pick one and pay for the ticket.

Take the ticket from the machine and continue walking down the hall to door number 4, go outside, and find your taxi company. More likely, they'll find you, put your luggage in the car, and be on your way. They will give you the part of your ticket that is the receipt.

The ride from the airport will take about 15-20 minutes (maybe longer if there's traffic). You don't have to tip the driver but it's certainly appreciated, and you would in your home country. 50 pesos is about US$2.55, if you're stuck on how much (or whether) to tip your taxi driver.

You'll soon arrive at the MS Millennium Hotel and be ready to enjoy the GLS Conference.

(mew)

International Women's Day

"Be Bold for Change" is the theme of International Women's Day 2017. You can be part of helping to forge a more inclusive gender equal world.

March 8 marks International Women's Day each year to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievement of women.  But much more work remains to be done.

For more information, ideas and resources,  visit the official International Women's Day website.

(cgb)

Global Legal Skills Conference in Monterrey, Mexico

The 2017 Global Legal Skills Conference (GLS-12) will be held in Monterrey, Mexico, at the Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey. The conference will begin on Wednesday, March 15, and continue through Friday, March 17, 2017. There will also be a pre-conference field trip on March 14, 2017. Participants are expected from Australia, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Haiti, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela. The GLS-12 Conference is organized by the Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico), the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico Department of Law (Mexico City), The John Marshall Law School (Chicago), and the University of Texas at Austin School of Law (Austin).

(mew)

Save the Date: ABA Annual Meeting

The American Bar Association holds it annual meeting this year in New York City from August 10-15, 2017. If your schedule allows, arrive early or stay late to treat yourself to a tour of the United Nations.

(mew)

Looking for the Best Student International Law Article Published in 2016

The International Law Students Association, in conjunction with the American Society of International Law (ASIL), is soliciting nominations for the Student Deak Award for articles published in the 2016 calendar year.

The Student Deak Award is a prize provided by Oxford University Press for the best international law student article in a student-edited law journal. The award honors Francis Deak, a WWII veteran who wrote extensively on international law. The award is the student equivalent of the prize separately awarded by the American Journal of International Law for the best article in the Journal.

Students, professors, practitioners or other persons in the legal community may nominate students for the Student Deak Award. A student may even nominate his or her own article. Per award rules, the nominee must have been a student at the time the article was written, and the article must have been published in a student-edited journal during the award year (2016). All nominations satisfying these criteria will be considered by the awards committee, who will choose the winning submission. The winner of the 2016 award will be announced at the 2017 ASIL Annual Meeting in Washington, DC in mid-April.

All nominations must include the student’s name, school, graduation year, full article (pdf), and article citation. The nominations should be sent to chapters@ilsa.org by March 12, 2017. Any questions about the award may also be directed to that email address.

(mew)

Sean Murphy to Give 2017 Herzog Lecture in Chicago on "Preventing and Punishing Crimes Against Humanity"

Preventing and Punishing Crimes Against Humanity

Speaker: Prof. Sean D. Murphy, Member, International Law Commission

Fred F. Herzog Memorial Lecture

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

The John Marshall Law School, 315 S. Plymouth Court, Chicago, Illinois

Meet and Greet to Follow the Lecture

"Crimes against humanity" are part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. These crimes include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and forcible transfer of a population, torture, rape, sexual slavery, and other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering. The International Law Commission has begun work on a Draft Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity. For the 2017 Herzog Memorial Lecture, Sean D. Murphy, a member of the International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur for the Project, will discuss the Commission's important work on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

The International Law Commission. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly established the International Law Commission to study and make recommendations that would encourage the "progressive development of international law and its codification." Its members are "persons of recognized competence in international law" who sit in their individual capacities and not as representatives of their governments.

Sean D. Murphy is a Professor at The George Washington University Law School and a leading authority on international law. He was recently re-elected to a second, five-year term on the International Law Commission.

Fred F. Herzog was born in 1907 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied law and in 1935 he became the youngest federal judge in Austria and the only Jewish judge in that country. Although appointed as a judge for life, he was removed from office in 1938 following the Nazi Anschluss of Austria. He escaped to Sweden and then to the United States, where he studied for an American law degree. He later became Dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law and then The John Marshall Law School. He died in 2008 in Chicago at the age of 100.

Fred F. Herzog Memorial Lecture Series. The lecture series named in Dean Herzog's honor has included such notable speakers such as Hans Corell (Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations), Laurel Bellows (President of the American Bar Association, speaking on Human Trafficking), Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University (speaking on Combating Holocaust Denial), and Thomas Buergenthal (former Judge of the International Court of Justice and a survivor of the Nazi camps).

Who should attend? The lecture will be of great interest to lawyers and law students interested in international law and to all persons interested in preventing and punishing crimes against humanity.

There is no charge to attend the lecture.

(mew)

Zero Discrimination Day

The United Nations agency leading the world's HIV/AIDS response is urging everyone to 'make some noise' for zero discrimination in healthcare settings.

“Healthcare settings should be safe and supportive environments. It is unacceptable that discrimination is inhibiting access to care today,” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), in his message for Zero Discrimination Day.

“Eliminating discrimination in health-care settings is critical, and we must demand that it become a reality,” Mr. Sidibé added.

The right to health is a fundamental human right that includes access to affordable, timely and quality health-care services for all, yet discrimination remains widespread in health-care settings, creating a serious barrier to access to HIV services.

Data from 50 countries from the People Living with HIV Stigma Index cited by UNAIDS show that one in eight people living with HIV report being denied health care.

Around 60 per cent of European Union/European Economic Area countries report that stigma and discrimination among health-care professionals remains a barrier to the provision of adequate HIV prevention services for men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs.

VIDEO: Discrimination doesn't hurt individuals, it hurts everyone. Zero Discrimination is integral to UNAIDS' vision says Executive Director, Michel Sidibé. Credit: UNAIDS

Each year on 1 March, the world marks Zero Discrimination Day “to highlight how everyone can be part of the transformation and take a stand for a fair and just society,” according to the press release.

“Everyone has the right to be treated with respect, to live free from discrimination, coercion and abuse,” said Mr. Sidibé.

“Discrimination doesn't just hurt individuals it hurts everyone, whereas welcoming and embracing diversity in all its forms brings benefits for all.”

(Adapted from a UN Press Release)

Protecting the Rohingya Community of Myanmar

Concluding a four-day visit to parts of Bangladesh where she met with members of Myanmar's Rohingya community who fled the violence there following attacks on a border post in early October and the ensuing military operations, a United Nations expert called for urgent action by the Government of Myanmar to end the suffering of the Rohingya population in the country.

“The magnitude of violence that these families have witnessed and experienced is far more extensive than I had originally speculated,” highlighted Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.

She recounted several allegations of horrific attacks including the slitting of some people's throats, indiscriminate shootings, houses being set alight with people tied up inside and very young children being thrown into the fire, as well as gang rapes and other sexual violence.

Earlier this month, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a flash report, based on its interviews with the people who fled Myanmar, in which it documented mass gang-rape, killings, including of babies and young children, brutal beatings, disappearances and other serious human rights violations by the country's security forces.

In addition to the alleged human rights violations occurring within the context of the security operations that followed the 9 October attacks, Ms. Lee also highlighted today how the Government of Myanmar appears to have taken, and continues to take, actions which discriminate against the Rohingya and make their lives even more difficult.

“I urge the Government of Myanmar to immediately cease the discrimination that the community continues to face, to act now to prevent any further serious rights violations and to conduct prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigations into those already alleged to have occurred,” said the UN rights expert.

“We all owe it to those I have met and their fellow community members to do everything in our power to ensure this is done and to give the Rohingya people reason to hope again,” she added.

During her mission to Bangladesh, Ms. Lee visited the capital Dhaka and the town of Cox's Bazar, located near its border with Myanmar, where many members of the Rohingya community had fled to. Ms. Lee will present her full report to the UN Human Rights Council on 13 March.

Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

(Adapted from a UN Press Release)

Russia and China Veto Another UN Security Council Resolution Seeking to Impose Sanctions on Syria

Russia and China exercised their veto powers this week in the United Nations Security Council to block a resolution that would, have imposed sanctions against specific parties using chemical weapons in war-torn Syria. Although nine of the Council’s 15 members voted to support the resolution, Bolivia joined Russia and China in rejecting it. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kazakhstan abstained.

(mew)

More than One Thousand Civilian Casualties in Iraq Last Month

More than 1,000 civilians were killed or injured last month in Iraq, the United Nations mission in the country has announced.

According to the latest figures from the UN Assistance Mission in the country (UNAMI), at least 392 civilians were killed and another 613 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict.

The head of UNAMI, Ján Kubiš, condemned the deliberate targeting of civilians by the Islamic State (ISIL), and saluted the Iraqi security forces for professionalism in pursuing the terrorists while seeking to minimize civilian casualties.

“As the Iraqi security forces stepped up the military operations to liberate the remaining parts of Mosul from Daesh control, the terrorists struck again, targeting civilians with cowardly bombings to ease the pressure on the frontlines,” Mr. Kubiš said referring to ISIL by its Arabic acronym.

“Daesh's sinister attempts have failed to weaken the resolve of the people and Government of Iraq to rid the country once and for all from the scourge of terrorism,” added Mr. Kubiš, who is also the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq.

The figure of 392 is slightly lower than 403 civilians killed in January, when an additional 924 civilians were injured.

(UN Press Release)

Thailand Fails to Criminalize Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance and Torture

The United Nations human rights office today urged the Government of Thailand to criminalize enforced or involuntary disappearance and torture. The announcement follows news last week that National Legislative Assembly – the military-appointed parliament – decided not to enact a bill that would have done just that.

“The Assembly’s decision to reject the bill is very concerning given the continued allegations of torture and disappearances in Thailand, and it is deeply worrying that such actions may now continue without any legal redress,” Ravina Shamdasani told journalists in Geneva.

Ms. Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), characterized the decision to not enact the bill as “a devastating blow” to the families of those who have disappeared.

Since 1980, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Voluntary Disappearances recorded 82 cases of enforced disappearances in the country. Those include the disappearances of respected lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit in 2004 and Karen human rights activist Pholachi “Billy" Rakchongcharoen in 2014.

Speaking to the press, Ms. Shamdasani also raised concern about the increasing number of criminal cases brought against human rights defenders in Thailand for reporting allegations of torture and ill-treatment.

(UN Press Release)

---