Ethnic Cleansing, Crimes against Humanity and Genocide in the 20th Century
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, October 14, 2009 | 5:00PM - 7:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk Centre For International Studies 1 Devonshire Place |
Description
Man’s inhumanity to man is not new. Homo homini lupus est. The 20th century has witnessed massacres, forced population transfers, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Lawyers have pondered how to deal with such violence. Is there a realistic hope of deterrence? The punishment of perpetrators of the Armenian genocide envisaged in article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres never happened. The Nazis were tried for the Holocaust at Nuremberg and elsewhere. But genocide did not stop with Nuremberg, nor with the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948 nor with the Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the special tribunal for Cambodia, the hybrid tribunal for Sierra Leone — none of these organs has ended massacres. What is the role of the United Nations in preventing genocide and crimes against humanity? What can we expect of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine? What are the rights of victims and their descendants? This lecture formulates some possible answers.
Alfred de Zayas, retired senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chief of Petitions and Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee. Visiting Professor of Law (McKay Brown Chair) at the University of British Columbia 2003, visiting professor of Law at DePaul University (Chicago), Visiting Professor of Law at the Geneva Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales. Professor of Law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. Author (together with Justice Jakob Möller) of “The UN Human Rights Committee Caselaw 1977-2008” N.P.Engel Publishers, Kehl/Strasbourg 2009. Author of “Nemesis at Potsdam” (Routledge), “The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau” (University of Nebraska Press), “A Terrible Revenge” (Palgrave/Macmillan 2006). President of P.E.N. International Centre Suisse romand, Author of Rainer Maria Rilke, Larenopfer — with a Preface by Professor Ralph Freedman (Red Hen Press, Los Angeles 2008). http://www.alfreddezayas.com/books.shtml
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