Enforcement of Human Rights in International Criminal Tribunals

If you wish to participate in this (remote) seminar, RSVP is necessary. Please complete the form before noon Wednesday 25 November and prior to the Thursday seminar, you will be sent a link to join.  Practitioners, academics and students from within and outside the University of Oxford are all welcome.

 

Although the remit of international criminal tribunals is IHL and not human rights, the tribunals made a major contribution to criminal enforcement of human rights as well.  

 

This talk discusses the ways in which international criminal tribunals such as the ICTY have contributed to human rights protections. In construing the material elements of crimes under international humanitarian law, international criminal tribunals have had recourse to human rights law and jurisprudence, thereby strengthening human rights law and opening new avenues for its penal enforcement. The beginnings of these developments can be traced, first, to the drafting of crimes against humanity clauses in the Nuremberg Charter and, second, to the drafting of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The tribunals have also made immense contributions to strengthening the proscriptions of rape as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal acts.  

 

THEODOR MERON has been a Judge and, between March 2012 and January 2019, was the President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism). He was also a Judge and Presiding Judge of the Appeals Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) since his election to the ICTY in March 2001 and until the closure of those Tribunals. In addition, he served a total of four terms as President of the ICTY. He continues as a Judge of the Mechanism. 

 

A leading scholar of international humanitarian law, human rights, and international criminal law, Judge Meron is the author of a dozen books on international law and chivalry in Shakespeare and more than a hundred articles, including some of the books and articles that helped build the legal foundations for international criminal tribunals. His new book, Standing up for Justice: Challenges of Trying Atrocity Crimes will be released by the OUP in February.  

 

He is a member and currently vice-president of the Institute of International Law, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the American Academy of Art Sciences, and the recipient of numerous awards, honours, and medals, such as the Hudson Medal (ASIL) and the Haskins Prize (ACLS) as well as Officer of the French Legion of Honour, Grand Officer of the French National Order of Merit as well as Officer of the Order of Merit of Poland. A past honorary President of the American Society of International Law and past Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, he is Charles L. Denison Professor of Law Emeritus at NYU Law School and, since 2014, a Visiting Professor of Law at Oxford University, he is a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College and Academic Associate of Bonavero and Honorary Visiting Fellow in Trinity College. In 2019, HM Queen Elizabeth II appointed him an Honorary Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG). for service to criminal justice and international humanitarian law.  

 

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