Victims Rights and International Justice

PSIA presents: 

Victims Rights: What Justice for Victims of International Crimes?

Wednesday 3 February 2021 | >5:00 pm - 6:15 pm CET

Watch the replay of the event.

This event aims at discussing the rights of victims, under international justice, to receive remedies for gross human rights violations. The discussion will feature Reed Brody, Counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has dedicated his career to working with victims of atrocities and who will share his experience. Two PSIA faculty members will lead the discussion: Dr Sharon Weill, Professor of international law and Jeanne Sulzer, an attorney with expertise in international justice.

On the occasion of this event, Sharon Weill will present the book project The President on Trial: Prosecuting Hissene Habré (OUP, 2020). This project was done in collaboration with PSIA students who made interviews in Dakar with the actors of the tribunal, which convicted the former President of Chad, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Biographies

Reed Brody is Counsel for Human Rights Watch, where he works alongside atrocity victims who are fighting for justice. His advocacy with the victims of the exiled former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré – who was convicted of crimes against humanity in Senegal – and in the cases of Augusto Pinochet and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been featured in five films, including “The Dictator Hunter.” Author of Victims bring a Dictator to Justice: The Case of Hissène Habré (2017), he currently works with victims of the former dictator of Gambia Yahya Jammeh.

Sharon Weill (PhD, University of Geneva) teaches a clinic course for students at PSIA since 2016 and she joined The American University of Paris as Assistant Professor of International Law in fall 2018. Her research focuses on the relationship between law, conflict and the role of courts, while using socio-legal approaches including trial ethnography. Currently, she examines the role of domestic criminal judges as transnational actors in the global war on terror and the transformation of national criminal justice systems in respond to transnational jihadism. She is the author of the book The Role of National Courts in Applying International Humanitarian Law (Oxford University Press, 2014) and co-editor of the book The President on Trial, Prosecuting Hissène Habré (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Jeanne Sulzer teaches International Criminal Law at PSIA and at Sciences Po Law School. She is an Attorney at law with 20-year experience in the fields of International Criminal Law, Human Rights and Terrorism with expertise in strategic litigation and assisting victims of international crimes at the national and international level (ECCC/Cambodia, CAE/Habré case, ICC, Universal jurisdiction cases). She is the Head of the International Justice Commission of Amnesty International France.

Photo Credit: ©Shutterstock/Vitalii Vodolazskyi