Work On! Court & rights webinar Wednesday

(Work On! is an occasional item about workshops, roundtables, and other fora)

"Human Rights Implications of SCOTUS Decisions in the 2012 Term" is the title of a webinar to be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time this Wednesday, July 18.
Sponsors are the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law and the American Society of International Law, both based in Washington, D.C.
The online briefing, on human rights implications of U.S. Supreme Court decisions announced last month, will be moderated by Lauren E. Bartlett, who directs the Local Human Rights Lawyering Project at the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
Providing the briefings will be:
► IntLawGrrl Connie de la Vega (right), Professor and Academic Director of International Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law, who will discuss Miller v. Alabama. As posted, in that judgment the Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution's 8th Amendment prohibits sentencing a child to life in prison without possibility of parole. Connie wrote an amicus brief in this case, as she has in many cases (see here) during the course of efforts to ease child sentencing laws.
► Martha F. Davis, Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, who will discuss National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. In that decision, as posted, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. led a 5-4 Court in sustaining the landmark health care legislation enacted in 2010, about which we've posted here, here, here, and here. Davis -- a faculty director for the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy, which which IntLawGrrls Hope Lewis and Angela Duger also are affiliated -- wrote an amicus brief in this health care litigation.
► Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program of the American Civil Liberties Union, will discuss Arizona v. United States. As posted, in that case Justice Anthony M. Kennedy led a 5-3 Court in striking much of the state's restrictive immigration law. The judgment left in place, however, a "check your papers" requirement of which immigrants' rights advocates are especially critical. Central to Bhatnagar's practice are the intersection of racial justice and immigration, the use of international and foreign law in U.S. courts, and the domestic implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Details on the webinar here. To register, e-mail whayes@wcl.american.edu.

Go On! Ending Human Trafficking, or Something Else?

"Ending Human Trafficking, or Something Else?" is the title of a conference I am co-organizing on behalf to the Open Society Foundations and the Women and the Law Program at American University Washington College of Law. The conference will be held at the Open Society Foundations office in Washington DC, on April 13, 2012 (9am-12:30pm).

This event aims to probe deeper into just how governments and advocates define the problem of trafficking, and how these different perspectives play out on the ground. For example, does “trafficking” encompass all forced labor? Does “trafficking” encompass all acts involving the sale of sex? Are these conceptions of trafficking consistent with international anti-trafficking law – and does that even matter? How have these perspectives shaped advocacy efforts on the ground? Most importantly, have these interventions brought us any closer to a world without trafficking.
The conference opens with a keynote address from U.S. Ambassador-at-Large on Human Trafficking, Luis CdeBaca, who will discuss the U.S. government’s efforts to combat trafficking worldwide and provide insight into how the concept of “trafficking” has evolved within the U.S. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Following the keynote will be two moderated panel discussions with experts in the trafficking field, including rights advocates, policymakers, and academics.
The first panel explores the connection between trafficking and forced labor, and the benefits and drawbacks of addressing trafficking through a labor-migration lens. The panel assesses labor advocates’ increasing reliance on anti-trafficking tools to address broader labor exploitation, and anti-trafficking advocates’ parallel efforts to utilize labor-migration frameworks as a means of preventing trafficking. Speakers include: IntLawGrrl Anne Gallagher, Legal Expert, ASEAN Adviser, and consultant to the United Nations; former Adviser on Trafficking to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Neha Misra, Senior Specialist, Migration and Human Trafficking, Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO; Roger Plant, Independent Consultant; former Head of Program, ILO Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labour; Jennifer Rosenbaum, Legal Director, National Guestworker Alliance; and IntLawGrrl Janie Chuang, Open Society Foundations Fellow and Associate Professor of Law, Washington College of Law (moderator).
The second panel assesses “end demand” campaigns that are primarily focused on abolishing prostitution by criminalizing the consumers of commercial sex. The panel will explore the evidence available about the effectiveness of end-demand policies on reducing trafficking into the sex sector, as well as their impact on other marginalized communities. Speakers include: Pye Jakobsson, Expert Consultant, Harm Reduction International, and founder of Rose Alliance; Lisa Kelly, S.J.D. candidate, Harvard Law School; Andrea Ritchie, Director, Streetwise & Safe; former Director, Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center; Noy Thrupkaew, journalist & Open Society Foundations Fellow; Denise Brennan, Chair, Department of Anthropology, Georgetown University (moderator).

For more information and registration, please visit this website.

Go on! Conference on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

The War Crimes Research Office and Women and International Law Program at the American University Washington College of Law will be co-hosting a conference on Addressing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings with the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands. The event will present a unique opportunity for practitioners, scholars, and advocates to discuss challenges faced by women in conflict and post-conflict situations, and efforts to address sexual and gender-based violence, at both the national and international level. It will take place at the Washington College of Law February 1 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
The half-day conference will kick off with a keynote conversation between Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer (pictured at right) and Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Renée Jones-Bos (pictured at left, courtesy of Embassy of the Netherlands). The conversation will be moderated by IntLawGrrl contributor Diane Orentlicher and until recently Deputy at the Office of War Crimes Issues for the U.S. Department of State. This will be followed by two panels: the first focusing on the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence by international and hybrid tribunals and the second examining national and international efforts to address sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Further details available here. Registration (available here) is free of charge but required.

Database on Gender & ICL

The War Crimes Research Office and the Women and International Law Program at American University Washington College of Law announce the launch of the Gender Jurisprudence Collections, an online research tool that allows judges, lawyers, and researchers to search the jurisprudence of eleven international/ized criminal courts and tribunals for documents containing information regarding the prosecution of crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence.

Reviewers have analyzed and catalogued more than 17,000 documents from the Jurisprudence Collections of the War Crimes Research Office, for which I serve as Director. Reviewers have noted, for example, when evidence of sexual or gender-based violence appears in the record, when sexual or gender-based violence charges are brought, dropped, or dismissed, or when a defendant is tried for a crime of sexual or gender-based violence. The Gender Jurisprudence Collections features keyword- and targeted-search fields, which eliminate the need to sift through irrelevant documents when conducting research on the rapidly developing jurisprudence in these bodies.
The database was created, with support from the Open Society Institute’s International Women’s Program, in response to requests by experts in the fields of gender and international criminal law who noted that researching the treatment of sexual and gender-based violence by the international tribunals was unduly difficult because of the absence of a central database of materials related to the investigation and prosecution of such cases.
Judge Patricia Whalen of the War Crimes Chamber of the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has called the creation of the Gender Jurisprudence Collections “a great accomplishment,” while former Legal Advisor on Gender Issues at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Patricia Viseur Sellers has noted that the GJC promises to be “a fabulous tool” that she “can’t wait to use and see used by others.”
In the future, the Gender Jurisprudence Collections will feature digests of key documents, which will highlight the facts, allegations, and other factors affecting the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence. The project website will in the future also feature space for expert commentaries and discussion.
To access the Gender Jurisprudence Collections and learn more about the project, please visit our site. Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to Alison Plenge (right), Jurisprudence Collections Coordinator, at genderjurisprudence@wcl.american.edu.

Go On! Looking Forward: The Refugee Convention at 60

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

Tomorrow, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and ASIL's International Refugee Law Interest Group, along with American University's International Human Rights Law Clinic and Immigrants' Rights Coalition, will host a conference at American University's Washington College of Law commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees:

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the key document in the framework for the international protection of persons displaced outside of their home countries. Through the last sixty years, the landscape of international displacement and migration has become increasingly complex, begging questions as to gaps in the framework for the protection of forcibly displaced persons. This conference examines the current dynamics of forced displacement, highlighting the challenges that particular flows pose to existing legal standards, and focusing attention on the breadth and limits of the Convention and complementary systems as a framework for international protection of persons who cannot return to their home countries.

The conference opens at 9 am, with opening comments by Tom Syring, co-chair of ASIL's International Refugee Law Interest group.
The first panel, focusing on interpretive challenges, features Pamela Goldberg, Acting Senior Protection Officer at UNHCR, Deborah Anker, Director of the Immigration and Refugee Clinic at Harvard Law School (pictured far left), and Anwen Hughes, Deputy Director of the Refugee Protection Program at Human Rights First. This panel runs from 10:15 to 11:45 am.
Bill Frelick, the Director of the Refugee Program at Human Rights Watch, will present the keynote lecture, Challenges to International Refugee Protection, from 11:45 am to 1 pm.
The second panel, focusing on normative challenges, features Alice Thomas of the Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement at Refugees International (pictured near left), Alexander Betts, Director of the Global Migration Governance Project at Oxford University, and yours truly, IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales. This panel runs from 1 to 2:30 pm.
The final panel, on protracted refugee situations, features Andrew Schoenholtz, Deputy Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, Ambassador Clovis Maksoud, Director of the Center for the Global South at American University, Roberta Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (pictured near right), and Lavinia Limon, President of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (pictured far right). This panel runs from 2:45 to 4:15 pm.
The day will end with closing remarks and a reception at 4:30 pm.
If you're interested in attending, registration is free but required – please register here.

New report on cumulative charging at ICC

A new report on cumulative charging has just been released by the War Crimes Research Office, American University Washington College of the Law, for which I serve as Director.
Cumulative charging has become an issue in Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, an International Criminal Court case arising out of violence in the Central African Republic. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts available here.)

On 15 June 2009, the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber II issued a decision that both confirmed and denied various charges lodged against Bemba, and then sent the confirmed charges to trial.

The Prosecution had alleged that Bemba bore responsibility for these offenses based on evidence establishing, inter alia, his role in numerous acts of rape committed against civilians in the Central African Republic. Importantly, the Pre-Trial Chamber did find sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that these acts of rape took place, and that the accused could be held criminally responsible for the acts. Yet, it held that the Prosecution had acted inappropriately by bringing “cumulative charges” based on the acts of rape. Thus it confirmed only the charges of rape as a crime against humanity and rape as a war crime, and dismissed the charges of torture as a crime against humanity and outrage upon personal dignity as a war crime.

The report just issued by our War Crimes Research Office examines 2 determinations of the Bemba Pre-Trial Chamber:

► That the practice of cumulative charging is not warranted in the context of the ICC as a general matter; and

► That, in the Bemba case before it, the charges of torture as a crime against humanity and outrage upon personal dignity as a war crime were inappropriately cumulative.

The report begins with a discussion of cumulative charging in international criminal bodies, where the practice is widely accepted. It then lays out the relevant jurisprudence from the Bemba case. Finally, the report analyzes the Bemba jurisprudence and offers recommendations.

In particular, the report concludes that:

► Nothing prohibits the practice of cumulative charging at the ICC, and

► Persuasive reasons exist to permit the practice.

On this basis, the report recommends that the ICC broadly permit cumulative charging, or, at a minimum, that it permit multiple charges based on the same evidence where each charge contains a materially distinct element.

Go On! Women in the military

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

"Women in the Military: Fighting For Their Rights" is the title of a program to be presented from 12 noon to 2 p.m. this Thursday, March 25, at the American University Washington College of Law, 4801 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. Sponsors are the National Institute of Military Justice, on whose boards IntLawGrrls Elizabeth Lutes Hillman, Beth Van Schaack, and I proudly serve, as well as the law school's Women’s Law Association and Veterans Law Student Association.

Featured panels:
► Current Issues Affecting Women In The Military. Speaking will be Captain Lory Manning, Director of the Women in the Military Project for the Women's Research and Education Institute; Commander Carol Stundtner, Gender Policy Advisor, U.S. Coast Guard; and Captain Kari Crawford, Attorney, Criminal Law Division, U.S. Army JAG Corps. Michelle M. Lindo McCluer, NIMJ Executive Director, will moderate.
► Addressing Sexual Assault In The Military. Brigadier General (ret.) Thomas R. Cuthbert, Senior Technical Advisor for the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in Military Services; and Janet Mansfield, Attorney, Criminal Law Policy Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, and Legal Advisor to U.S. Army Sexual Harassment/Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Program.

The event is free. Details and registration here.

Go On! LatCrit XIV

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) The schedule for LatCrit XIV and the LatCrit/SALT New Faculty Development Workshop, hosted by American University Washington College of Law Oct. 1-4, is now available here. Hotel and conference registration materials are available here -- the hotel is already 70% booked, so make your reservations soon! The conference theme narrative and initial call for papers/panels are here. Note, however, that the submission deadline has long passed and, absent cancellations, there will be no more panel and work-in-progress slots available (with the exception of commentators for works-in-progress colloquia).

Write on! LatCrit XIV Call for Papers

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.)
The theme of "Outsiders Inside: Critical Outside Theory and Praxis in the Policymaking of the New American Regime" will be the focus of the 14th Annual LatCrit Conference, which will be hosted by American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C., from Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, October 4, 2009.
Conference organizers seek papers

propounding prescriptive critiques of discrete areas of law, policy and regulation of specific relevance to outsider communities, including (but by no means limited to) economic justice, international and comparative law, criminal law and the death penalty, civil rights and constitutional law (including gender and LGBT equality, reproductive and disability rights), immigration, political and electoral (dis)enfranchisement, communications policy and intellectual property, healthcare, education, employment, tax policy, and the environment. We also, of course, welcome proposals for more theoretical panels and papers, particularly (but not exclusively) in areas linked to the challenges posed by progressive governance and the ascendance of outsiders to positions of ultimate authority.

More information regarding the conference may be found here. The call for papers is here. Panel and paper proposals should be submitted online at this website no later than Monday, April 27, 2009. Paper proposals for work-in-progress sessions will be accepted through mid-July.

Go On! Right to Identity

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) In some countries in the Americas citizens are denied the right to their identity, and that denial that threatens their civil status from birth to death. Addressing that issue will be a conference entitled "Right to Identity in the Americas: The Role of Civil Society," to be held March 7 at American University's Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law, Washington, D.C. Additional cosponsors are Rights & Democracy, based in Montreal, Canada, and the D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights (of which, I'm proud to say, my former student, Monika Kalra Varma (top right), is director).
Speakers include: our colleague Roxanna Altholz (middle right), Associate Director of the human rights law clinic at the University of California, Berkeley; Sonia Pierre (top left) of El Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitiana, an NGO in the Dominican Republic; Colette Lespinasse (bottom right) of Le Groupe d'Appui aux Rapatriés et Réfugiés, a Haiti-based NGO; and Dr. Sofia Macher (bottom left), formerly a member of Truth and Reconciliation Committee, representing Instituto de Defensa Legal, an NGO in Peru. Also invited are representatives from the Organization of American States, the United Nations, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Can't make it in person? Not a problem. The conference will be webcast at http://wclcenterforhr.org/.