2007 Events
- 7 December: IILAH Booklaunch, International Law and the Question of Western Sahara, launched by Professor Stephen Zunes (University of San Francisco)
- 29 - 30 November: International Conference, Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand, Markings - Sites of analysis, discipline, interrogation
- 16 November 2007: Workshop, Seen and Heard: Priority for Children in the Legal Process, 10 years on: Looking Back and Moving Forward
- 16 October 2007: IILAH Seminar, Australia’s return of asylum seekers to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea: Lawful protection elsewhere policies? presented by Melbourne Law School Visiting Scholar Dr Savitri Taylor
7 December: IILAH Booklaunch, International Law and the Question of Western Sahara, launched by Professor Stephen Zunes (University of San Francisco)
(Convenor: Dr Jenny Beard)
Dr Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics (University of San Francisco), will launch International Law and the Question of Western Sahara. Professor Zunes holds a PhD from Cornell University, M.A. from Temple University and B.A. from Oberlin College. He has previously served on the Faculty of Ithaca College, University of Puget Sound, & Whitman College. He serves as an advisory committee member and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project & as an associate editor of Peace Review.
Professor Zunes writes on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, social movements, and human rights. He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell Publishers, 1999) and the author of the highly-acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003) and the forthcoming Western Sahara: Nationalism and Conflict in Northwest Africa (Syracuse University Press.) He was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship on Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at Dartmouth College and a Joseph J. Malone Fellowship in Arab and Islamic Studies. In 2002, he won recognition from the Peace and Justice Studies Association as Peace Scholar of the Year.
“Fortunately for everyone interested in justice for Western Sahara, this compilation of the presentations made in The Hague at the October 2006 Conference on International Law and Western Sahara is now available. It goes a long way to putting Western Sahara on the geo-political map for those unfamiliar with the issues, and for the rest of us, it explains why this 30 year old conflict is so important, not only to the Saharawis but to the great powers. It also emphasizes why Western Sahara is not a sideshow to be patronized by the U.N. as it concentrates on other hot spots in the world. After the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, people all over the world said: “We are all New Yorkers now.” Ideally, as people learn more about the Saharawi cause through books like this one, we might someday hear: “We are all Saharawis now.” FRANK RUDDY , U.S. Ambassador (ret.) Former Deputy Chairman, U.N. Peacekeeping Mission for Western Sahara
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Please follow the link http://www.wsrw.org/index.php?cat=106&art=596
to view a video from the booklaunch.
29 - 30 November: International Conference, Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand, Markings - Sites of analysis, discipline, interrogation
(The conference was hosted by the Melbourne Law School, the Centre for Media and Communications Law and Institute for International Law and the Humanities.)
Plenary keynote speakers and Plenary panellists:
Sadaf Aziz, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Eve Darian-Smith, University of California, Santa Barbara
William MacNeil, Griffith University
Shaun McVeigh, Melbourne Law School
Rebecca Scott Bray, University of Sydney
The conference theme examines questions of disciplinary, geographic, figurative and jurisdictional markings, and the organisers particularly seek contributions engaging with these issues:
- Sociolegal markings and boundaries;
- Marking of borders: observing, policing;
- Experimental markings: investigation and writing;
- Methods and the markings of research;
- Marking jurisdiction: sovereign and subject;
- Textual markings: analysis of legal, political, social texts.
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28 November: International Conference, Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand, Markings - Sites of analysis, discipline, interrogation
Marks of Disobedience - Public Seminar
This event begins the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand 2007 Conference at the Melbourne Law School and is jointly presented by the Melbourne Law School’s Centre for Media and Communications Law and Institute for International Law and the Humanities and the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand.
Speakers:
Julian Burnside QC
Juliet Rogers (University of Melbourne)
Patrick Wolfe (Victoria University)
Chaired by Peter Rush (University of Melbourne)
Law, society and government require agreement, assent and obedience. From this perspective, disobedience is both a violence and a deviance from the norm. It is a negation of law, something lacking in or subtracted from law. In these times of (anti)terror, speech, violence and sometimes the very presence of bodies have become the marks of disobedience. Forms of association – from the workplace to familial relations and friendship networks – become signs of national disaffection and illegality. And, to many, practices of criminalization, surveillance, policing and detention – not to mention interrogation and torture – seem both new and strangely familiar. Indeed, the state has always displayed a particular kind of marksmanship towards many, and some people have always disobeyed.
However, there is also a long tradition invoking the very lawfulness of disobedience. We stand together and with others in our disobedience of the rules of officials and the laws of the state. Communities have been forged in and need dissension and disobedience. Can we discern at work in these communities a different perspective - one that would take disobedience not so much as a breach of rules constrained by violence and habit but as a positive force in the constitution of law and society?
This forum will be a conversation about the increased impossibilities of disobedience in contemporary law and society. Each speaker will offer short comment and then engage in a conversation, with each other and the audience, about the possibilities of thinking or performing otherwise than obedient. And the forum will question whether at this time, and in this place, obedience is ever justified?
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16 November 2007: Workshop, Seen and Heard: Priority for Children in the Legal Process, 10 years on: Looking Back and Moving Forward
(Convenors: Mr John Tobin, Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School, also representing the Human Rights Forum, University of Melbourne ; Tiffany Overall, Youth Law (Victoria); and James McDougall, National Children’s and Youth Law Centre (NSW).)
It is now 10 years since the release of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report, Seen and Heard: Priority for Children in the Legal Process, which remains the most comprehensive account of the status of children within the Australian legal system. A research workshop will be held on Friday 19 November, in the Melbourne Law School, to (a) reflect on the extent to which the recommendations proposed in the report have been adopted and (b) consider the research and advocacy necessary to affirm, develop and expand upon the vision articulated in the report with respect to the treatment of children within Australia.
The workshop, Seen and Heard: Priority for Children in the Legal Process, 10 years on: Looking Back and Moving Forward, will be co-hosted by IILAH, Youth Law (Victoria), the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre (NSW) and the Human Rights Forum, Melbourne University. The workshop is intended to bring together practitioners, researchers and colleagues from the Government and community sectors to stimulate what is hoped to be an ongoing and collaborative discussion with respect to these issues. Participation will be by invitation only with numbers limited to 40 participants.
16 October 2007: IILAH Research Seminar, Australia’s return of asylum seekers to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea: Lawful protection elsewhere policies? presented by Melbourne Law School Visiting Scholar Dr Savitri Taylor
(Convenor: Dr Michelle Foster)
Australia represents the arrangements that it has in place, to return certain asylum seekers to Indonesia and certain others to PNG, as being implementations of protection elsewhere policies, which are within the bounds of what is permissible under international law. The question which I want to explore in this paper is whether Australia’s practice in this regard can indeed be characterised as internationally lawful.
Dr Savitri Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at La Trobe University. Her main research interest for the past 15 years has been in the area of Australian and international legal and policy responses to asylum seekers and she is presently engaged in an ARC Linkage Project entitled "The Impact on the Human Rights of Asylum-Seekers and Host Communities of Australia’s Border Control Cooperation with Indonesia and PNG". She also has a long-standing community sector involvement in asylum seekers issues, as a member of the Committee of Management of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre Inc.
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19-21 September: International workshop, International Law and Wars of Religion at the Faculty of Law, University of Lund in Sweden
(Convenors: Professor Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki; Professor Gregor Noll, University of Lund; and Professor Anne Orford, Institute for International Law and the Humanities)
International law is often represented as offering an answer to the resurgent discourse of religious warfare globally and to the challenge of civil warfare internally. In this vision, the turn to international law promises to perfect the elegant European solution to earlier periods of seemingly intractable religious warfare – the modern state. This workshop will explore whether this familiar solution is really available. It will bring together scholars working on the histories of international law and the state in Europe and the New World, with those seeking to theorise about contemporary developments in the laws of war and peace. The workshop aims to explore what the resources of the secular, civil jurisprudence of Europe offer those seeking to understand and respond to the political challenges of our time.
Speakers will include Professor Friedrich Kratochwil (Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute), Dr Naz Modirzadeh (Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard), Dr Marie Jacobsson (Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden), Professor Nathaniel Berman (Law, Brooklyn), Dr Pamela Slotte (Theology, Helsinki), Professor Philip Lorenz (English, Cornell), Professor Tony Anghie (Law, Utah), Professor Werner Jeanrond (Theology, Lund), Professor Hani Sayed (Law, American University in Cairo) and Dr Jenny Beard (Law, Melbourne). Research students Ms Yoriko Otomo and Mr Luis Eslava from the Melbourne Law School will also present at the workshop.
The workshop is funded by the Academy of Finland, the Australian Research Council and Lund University.
More information:
International Law and Wars of Religion - Flyer
List of participants
List of speakers and abstracts
29 August: IILAH In conversation with Paul Cleary, author of Shakedown: Australia's Grab for Timor Oil and Dr Jenny Beard
(Convenor: Associate Professor Sundhya Pahuja)
Paul Cleary in conversation with Dr Jenny Beard will be discussing his latest book Shakedown: Australia's Grab for Timor Oil. The session will be chaired by Associate Professor Sundhya Pahuja. Both Jenny and Sundhya are co-directors of the research program on law and development at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne Law School.
In 2000 one of the poorest nations on earth began negotiations with Australia over rights to the lucrative oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea. With the revenue from the oil and gas fields, the young democracy of East Timor would have a chance to secure its economic future. In an ironic twist of fate, East Timor found that Australia, the country which had delivered freedom to the Timorese by intervening against Indonesia's bloody attacks in 1999, was now trying to deny it a fair share of the profits.
This is the inside story of Australia's attempts to bully East Timor out of a promising future. Paul Cleary, a former East Timor government adviser, gives a gripping insider's account of the six years of bruising negotiations between Australia and East Timor that followed the independence ballot. In this compelling insight into Australia's international operations, Cleary exposes the heroes and villains who emerged in a one-hundred-billion-dollar shakedown.
Paul Cleary began his career as an Australian journalist reporting on economic and social policy, and on Southeast Asia. After serving a decade in Australia’s national press gallery he was awarded a Chevening Fellowship by the UK Foreign Office, and after completing studies in London was appointed by the World Bank as an advisor to the Prime Minister of East Timor on the Timor Sea oil and gas negotiations.
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23 August: ILLAH Research Seminar, Corporate social responsibility and international soft law: Opportunities and limits for TNCs’ accountability for human rights
During the globalization age law seems to be characterized by two basic features: (1) an ever less hierarchical framework; (2) an increasing role played by non-state actors in rule making, as it is showed by the emerging of the new lex mercatoria. Such features do not matter for international private law only, but also for the international justiciability of human rights, which is developing through interconnections among several trends in transnational law and in public international law. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to have obligations lying at the borderline between ethics and law and the increased role played by soft law in international legal system contributes to make the two spheres conflate.
The presentation aimed to analyse some troublesome consequences of the overlap between international soft law and the corporate social responsibility paradigm in ethics and in economics for human rights effectiveness, when these latter might be infringed by TNCs’ action. It is intended to assess whether this very convergence could be a proper path to enforce private actors' legal accountability for human rights.
Professor Elena Pariotti (University of Padua, Italy), teaches Human Rights; Legal Theory; and Human Rights and International Justice in the Faculty of Political Science with a legal theory and legal philosophy perspective. Her main research interests have been dealing with legal interpretation, multiculturalism, human rights and theory of international law, international justice. She is a published author of three (written in Italian) books, respectively concerning the debate between Liberalism and Communitarianisam and their approaches to fundamental rights and cultural right; the notion of interpretive community in contemporary theories of legal interpretation; the concept of international justice in the light of the increasing mutual openness of legal systems.
Professor Pariotti is currently interested in studying the relationships between the theory of international law and the emerging accountability of private economic actors for international justice principles and human rights.
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Download transcript here.
14 August: IILAH Seminar, Afghanistan 2007: Women liberated or a continued struggle for fundamental human rights?
(Convenor: Associate Professor Dianne Otto)
Sohaila, from RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), will be speaking about women’s rights in Afghanistan at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne, co-hosted by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) and the Law Students Society Women’s Officers 2007.
In November 2001, then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made a strong statement: “The rights of women of Afghanistan will not be negotiable. When the light is fully shed throughout all Afghanistan, the United States is committed to working to ensure not only that women of Afghanistan regain their place in the sun, but they have their place in the future government as well.”
Almost 6 years on, this rhetoric rings hollow, as there have been few positive changes for women and almost no formal international support. Extreme poverty, high mortality rates related to malnutrition, childbirth or suicide, and a culture of misogyny are still bleak features of everyday life. Security for girls is extremely poor: kidnap, rape and murder are frequent.
Introductions by: Ms Olivera Simic, PhD Law Download transcript
Download Event flyer - Sohalia
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19-20 July: Workshop, Current issues in Refugee Status Determination
(Convenor: Dr Michelle Foster)
This two-day workshop will explore cutting-edge issues in refugee status determination.
Day one of the workshop will focus upon economic, social and cultural rights in the context of refugee determination, particularly in relation to the question of when the deprivation of socio-economic rights may amount to persecution.
Day two of the workshop will address other cutting edge issues in international law, as relevant to refugee status determination.
Workshop flyer - Current issues in refugee status determination
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19 July: Book launch, International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation
IILAH invites all friends and colleagues to celebrate the book launch by Justice Tony North from Federal Court of Australia and President of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges.
Dr Michelle Foster’s International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation is the first book to consider the cutting edge issue of refugee claims based on the deprivation of socio-economic rights. The book contains extensive original case-law research across five common law jurisdictions on an important contemporary issue of international refugee law. It provides an excellent resource for refugee advocates, policy-makers (such as NGOs) and refugee decision-makers around the world.
Event flyer - Book Launch - Dr Michelle Foster
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18 July: Melbourne Law School Distinguished Visitor Program Public Lecture, Human Rights Conditionality in International Trade: Revisiting the Debate presented by Professor Robert Howse (University of Michigan)
This lecture will revisit the controversial issue of human rights conditionality and international trade. It will do so in light of recent empirical evidence of when conditionality may be effective and when it will not. This will then allow for a closer analysis of the promise and limits of recent developments with respect to voluntary codes of conduct/corporate social responsibility, as well as the evolution of GSP conditionality (preferences) and conditionality in Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs).
Professor Robert Howse is Alene and Allan F Smith Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. He has also taught at Harvard, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Tsing Hua, and Paris (Sorbonne-Pantheon) Universities and is a regular instructor at the World Trade Institute, Berne. In 2007-2008 he will be a visiting professor at Fordham University (fall) and New York University School of Law (Spring). He is the author, among other works, of The Regulation of International Trade (with Michael Trebilcock), a contributor to the American Law Institute project on WTO Law, and series editor for Oxford University Press’s Commentaries on the WTO Treaties.
Lecture flyer - Human rights conditionality in international trade: Revisiting the debate
Click here to listen to the lecture
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17 July: Research workshop, Tracing the Contours of the Right to Regulate at International Law
(Convenor: Mr Jürgen Kurtz)
The workshop will examine the interplay between the imperatives and limits that shape the contemporary regulatory state. It will take as its normative starting point the right of states to regulate at international law. This will then allow for close analysis and contrast on the scope, quality and institutional structure of interventions on that right in key areas of public interest. Those key areas will include national security, economic liberalism, development, the environment and human rights. It will seek to draw out the implications of these often conflicting interventions for regulatory autonomy and citizen welfare in the contemporary state.
Professor Robert Howse of the University of Michigan will act as the closing speaker at the workshop.
Workshop flyer - Tracing the Contours of the Right to Regulate at International Law
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7 June: IILAH Twilight seminar, State power, patent power and patent offices - lessons for developing countries from history with Professor Peter Drahos and Professor Bhupinder Chimni.
(Convenor: Professor Anne Orford)
A lot is known about the history of patent law. Much less is known about the history of patent administration. In this seminar, Professor Peter Drahos (The Australian National University) will look at the emergence of modern patent administration in Europe and the US. He will ask whether this regulatory history contains lessons for how developing countries today might approach patent administration. Professor Bhupinder Chimni (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) will offer a response.
Professor Drahos is Director of the Centre for Governance of Knowledge and Development and the Head of Program of the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University. His former positions include Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow in Intellectual Property at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary College, University of London and officer of the Australian Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department. He has published widely in law and social science journals on a variety of topics including contract, legal philosophy, telecommunications, intellectual property, trade negotiations and international business regulation. He has worked as a consultant on international intellectual property issues for a number of organizations, including the European Commission, the UK Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, the Commonwealth Secretariat, Oxfam and the ASEAN Secretariat.
Flyer - IILAH Twilight Seminar
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7 June: IILAH Postgraduate roundtable, Power, Property and Possession with Professor Peter Drahos and Professor B S Chimni
(Convenor: Professor Anne Orford)
The roundtable is designed to allow postgraduate research students to present work in progress, with comments by Professor Drahos, Professor Chimni and audience members.
Roundtable program details - Research student roundtable
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6 June: Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture, Third World Approaches to International Law: Past, Present and Future with Professor B S Chimni (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
The lecture takes a sweeping look at the past, present and future of international law using a critical third world approach. This approach gives meaning to international law in the matrix of the people with life experiences of the third world in the colonial and post colonial eras. The thread that binds the disparate fragments of past, present and future of international law considered is the theme of alienation of international law from the people of the third world. The term alienation is used to denote the estranged relationship between individuals, societies and nature under global capitalism. In speaking of the future of international law the slow transformation of international law into internal law and the emergence of a Global State is discussed. Finally, the lecture reflects on the role of international lawyers in creating a just world order.
Professor B S Chimni is an internationally renowned legal academic and a key figure in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) network of scholars. He is Professor of International Law at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has held visiting positions at the International Centre for Comparative Law and Politics at Tokyo University, Harvard Law School, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Public International Law, Heidelberg, and the Centre for Refugee Studies, University of York, Canada.
Professor Chimni was a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1997-2000). His publications include International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches (1993) and the co-edited volume, The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalization (2004).
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27 April: Roundtable discussion Zero Tolerance Policy, the problem of 'sexual exploitation and abuse' in peace support operations and the zero tolerance approach promoted by the Secretary-General's Bulletin (2003)
(Convenor: Associate Professor Dianne Otto)
The Roundtable is being co-organised by the Law and Policy Project/Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at The University of Melbourne, with support from the Centre for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia Law School.
The Zero Tolerance Policy Roundtable will bring approximately 30 people together, to discuss the policy, its implementation and impact and ask some critical questions about it. The Roundtable will also discuss alternative approaches to addressing sexual exploitation and abuse in conflict-affected settings.
The main objective will be to open a dialogue among interested practitioners and scholars with a view to understanding the most effective approaches to end the sexual exploitation and abuse of conflict-affected people. One concrete goal of the event is to identify potential areas for research that can inform future policies.
Participants will include scholars and practitioners who have had experience with the Zero Tolerance Policy and/or have had the opportunity to think through some of its complexities. Participants are expected to contribute to the discussions in their personal capacities and are invited to share their wealth of experience.
Zero Tolerance Events Agenda
24 April: Seminar, Unveiling the Political: A Postcolonial Theory Seminar with Dr Stewart Motha (University of Kent) and Dr Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne (Griffith University)
(Convenor: Associate Professor Sundhya Pahuja)
Dr Stewart Motha is a lecturer in the Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. He has previously taught law at the Universities of Lancaster and Adelaide. He was a legal officer and case manager with the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in South Australia. He has co-edited a special issue of the journal 'Law and Critique' and published articles in 'Social and Legal Studies', 'Australian Feminist Law Journal', 'Griffith Law Review' and 'Law and Critique'. He has recently published a book chapter, 'Guantanamo Bay, Abandoned Being and the Constitution of Jurisdiction' in Shaun McVeigh (ed.), Jurisprudence of Jurisdiction (2007).
Dr Roshan de Silva-Wijeyeratne has taught law at Griffith Law School for the last 5 years. He has published a number of articles on Sri Lanka and Jurisprudence in both edited collections and in journals such as 'Social and Legal Studies', 'Law/Text/Culture' and 'Social Identities'. He has also contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Legal History. Currently he is working on a momograph on Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka. He is an active participant on debates about the peace process in Sri Lanka having contributed to the media in both Sri Lanka and Britain.
A Postcolonial Theory Seminar Abstract and Programme
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16 March: Doctoral Student Roundtable, New Thinking in International Law with Professor Antony Anghie (University of Utah)
(Convenor: Professor Anne Orford)
Following opening remarks by Professor Anghie, four doctoral students at the University of Melbourne will each present a work-in-progress paper engaging critically with current debates in international law, followed by comments from Professor Anghie and a roundtable discussion. Papers will be presented by Yoriko Otomo (Law), Luis Eslava (Law), Daniel Muriu (Law) and Nesam McMillan (Criminology)
Antony Anghie is the Samuel D Thurman Professor of Law at the University of Utah. He received a B.A. (1986) and an LL.B. (1987) from Monash University in Melbourne, and his S.J.D. (1995) from Harvard Law School, where he also served as a senior fellow from 1993 to 1995. Professor Anghie's recent publications include Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and The Third World and International Legal Order: Law, Politics and Globalization, co-edited with B.S.Chimni, Karin Mickelson and Obiora Okafor, (Kluwer Law International, 2003).
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26 February: Postgraduate Roundtable with Sir Nigel Rodley
(Convenors: Professor Anne Orford with Ms Alison Duxbury and Associate Professor David Philips)
Postgraduate students are invited to submit expressions of interest for this unique workshop with one of the world's leading human rights specialists. Sir Nigel Rodley is the Vice-Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee and a Professor of Law and Chair of the Human Rights Centre at Essex University. Sir Nigel was the inaugural UN Special Rapporteur on Torture from 1993-2001 and has been a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists since 2003. He has also provided judicial and legal educational programs in Geneva, Africa, Eastern Europe and numerous Commonwealth countries.
Students are invited to submit proposals for brief (10 minute) informal presentations on any human rights related research they are currently undertaking, which will then be discussed in a roundtable setting. Sir Nigel will also give some insight into his work with the UN human rights treaty bodies and special procedures.
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23 February: Workshop, Protection Elsewhere: International law and the Off-shore Processing and Protection of Refugees
(Convenor: Dr Michelle Foster)
In recent years many state parties to the Refugee Convention, including Australia, have proposed and adopted policies that seek to move refugee protection ‘offshore’, by processing refugee claims extra-territorially and/or requiring refugees to seek ‘effective protection’ in other states. Although such practices are not new, there is surprisingly little clarity or consensus as to their legality at international law. For example, it is often asserted that state parties may transfer refugees to another state provided that a refugee will enjoy ‘effective protection’ in the third country; however there is little agreement on the precise parameters of that concept. In particular, the question of what, if any, human rights protections need to be present in another country before it may be considered to provide ‘effective protection’ remains unresolved.
This workshop will explore these issues in depth, focusing in particular on the meaning and content of the notion of ‘effective protection’, and on aspects of state responsibility for the off-shore processing of refugees. The workshop will bring together academics, decision-makers and advocates, and will provide a forum for meaningful engagement with these issues. Participants include Professor James Hathaway of the University of Michigan, Justice Tony North, President of the International Association of Refugee law Judges and Rodger Haines Q.C., Deputy Chairperson, New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals Authority.
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22 February: Allen Hope Southey Memorial Lecture, Why Refugee Law Still Matters with Professor James Hathaway (Michigan)
International refugee law has come under increasing attack in recent years. In particular, it has been suggested that international efforts are best addressed to meeting the needs of at-risk persons still inside their own country, and that whatever external protection is granted should be strictly temporary. Professor Hathaway will seek to open a debate on the wisdom of departure from traditional notions of asylum, and to suggest constructive ways that the human rights of involuntary migrants can best be reconciled to the legitimate concerns of receiving states.
Professor James Hathaway is a leading authority on international refugee law whose work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world. He is the founding director of the University of Michigan's Program in Refugee Asylum Law, Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Programme, and President of the Cuenca Colloquium on International Refugee Law. Professor Hathaway was previously Professor of Law and Associate Dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto), and has been appointed a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne, Cairo, California, Macerata and Tokyo. He regularly provides training on refugee law to the academic, non-governmental, and official audiences around the world.
Professor Hathaway's publications include more than sixty journal articles, a leading treatise on the refugee definition (The Law of Refugee Status, 1991), and an interdisciplinary study of models for refugee law reform (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997) and, most recently, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the US Committee for Refugee and Immigrants and of Asylum Access, a non-profit organisation committed to delivering innovative legal aid to refugees in the global South.
21 February: Seminar, The WTO Panel's Rulings in GMO/Biotech: A Conversation
(Convenor: Dr Jacqueline Peel)
At over 1000 pages, the WTO Panel decision in the recent GMO/Biotech case is arguably one of the longest and most complex decisions issued by the international trade dispute settlement system to date. The case deals with many important issues that touch not only on the interpretation of trade agreements (particularly the SPS Agreement), but also matters of public international law. The Panel’s decision will not be appealed, making an examination and understanding of its findings vital for all those interested in international trade law and its intersection with broader areas of public international law. In this seminar, five Faculty members will discuss their different perspectives on key aspects of the Panel’s rulings.
Speakers include:
- Jackie Peel, Senior Lecturer: Background to the GMO/Biotech case
- David Morgan, Senior Fellow: Scope of the SPS Agreement
- Tania Voon and Andrew Mitchell, Senior Lecturers: Use (and Misuse) of public international law in the GMO/Biotech case
- Jürgen Kurtz, Senior Lecturer: Some implications of the GMO/Biotech case for other regulatory regimes.
16 February: Book Launch, The Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Development and the Nation State
(Convenor: Professor Anne Orford)
IILAH invites you to celebrate the launch of ‘The Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Development and the Nation-State’, written by Dr Jennifer Beard, on Friday 16 February. The book will be launched by Professor Anne Orford, Director of IILAH.
This book by Jennifer Beard provides a genealogy of the concept of development as it relates to western identity, an international rule of law and the modern nation state. To investigate the relationship between the developed and developing world, Beard engages in a series of textual analyses, which rely on theories of political theology, Foucaultian bio-power and Derridian philosophy. The result is a broad ranging investigation of the modern concept of development and its consequences.
Download the Book Launch Flyer
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