B U L L E T I N
Volume 5, Issue 4
July 2005
30 Sept.-2 Oct. 2005
Conference:
“Past, Present and Future Policies of the EU in the field of Human
Rights, Peace and Security”
Irish Centre for Human Rights: w w w . n u i g a l w a y . i e / human_rights
E m a i l : humanrights@nuigalway.ie
I R I S H C
T O
E N T R E
H O S T
C O N F E R E N C E
F O R
I N T E R N A T I O N A L
O N
A N D
I
H U M A N
S L A M
L A W
, P
R I G H T S
O L I T I C S
On 10-11 September 2005, the Irish Centre for Human Rights will host a major international conference on the theme of Islam,
Human Rights and Politics. The conference, Reframing Islam: Politics into Law, will explore the multifaceted nature of
Islam, both its political, social, cultural and religious dimensions and how these, ultimately, impact and shape law. The two-day conference will examine the political, social, and cultural components of Islam and will focus on some of the international legal and normative questions to flow from Islam.
The conference boasts an impressive line-up of speakers, including, amongst others, Dr.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Islamic
Law at the University of California; Dr.
Salwa Ismail, Senior Lecturer in Middle
East Politics at the University of Exeter;
Ann E. Mayer, Associate Professor of Legal
Studies at the University of Pennsylvania;
Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Islamic Studies and Philosophy; Professor William
Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for
Human Rights, and Jillian Schwedler,
Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. For further details on the conference, see www.reframingislam.org or email vasiliki.germanakou@nuigalway.ie
ICHR Hosts Staff Book Launches
www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights/ summer_schools.html
Pictured above are Dr. Terry O’Neill
(l) and Nicholas Rees (r), co-authors of
“United Nations Peacekeeping in the
Post-Cold War Era.”
The Centre hosted two book launches in June of this year. The first, Sentencing War Crimes and Crimes
Against Humanity Under the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, was written by
Olaoluwa Olusanya, the Bank of Ireland Doctoral Fellow for 2004-2005. It is published by Europa Law
Publishing.
United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War
Era was also launched in June. The book is written by
Dr. Terry O’Neill and Nicholas Rees, Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Limerick, and published by Frank Cass Publishers. Dr. O’Neill is a former Colonel and a regular lecturer on the Irish Centre for Human Rights LLM in Peace Support Operations programme.

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Volume 5, Is sue 4
Irish Centre for Human Rights: w w w . n u i g a l w a y . i e / human_rights
E m a i l : humanrights@nuigalway.ie
June 11-18 saw the Irish Centre for Human
Rights present its summer course on Minority Rights. The annual course, along with the summer course on the International
Criminal Court is now firmly established at the Centre. This year the focus of the course turned to minorities and ethnic conflict and again attracted speakers of the highest calibre. Visiting lecturers included
Jérémie Gilbert, lecturer in law at the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, and graduate of the Irish Centre for
Human Rights PhD programme; Peter Leuprecht, Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN for Human Rights in Cambodia; Marnie Lloyd, Research Associate at the European Centre for Minority
Issues in Germany and Alexandra Xanthaki, Lecturer in Law at Brunel University.
Themes for the five-day course included definition and history of minorities and indigenous peoples, elimination of racial discrimination, self-determination, issues and cases of minorities and ethnic conflict and remedies.
Pictured below are participants at the summer school on Minority Rights, held at the ICHR from 11-18 June 2005.
Pictured above (from left) are Perry Mbibong,
Oana Petrescu, Florencia Plazas and Marwarn
Dalal, who were funded to attend the course.
The successful format of the annual summer course on the International Criminal Court continued this year with its five-day course attracting over forty participants. Speakers for this year’s course included Prof. Leila
Sadat of the Washington University School of Law; Judge Sang-Hyun Song of the International Criminal Court; Prof. Sharon
Williams of Osgoode Hall Law School;
Megan Fairlie, Law Lecturer at the University of Ulster; Rupert Skilbeck of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Richard
Dicker, Director of the International Justice
Program at Human Rights Watch and
Håkan Friman of University College
London.
Lectures for the course looked at the development of the Rome Statute and at procedural and jurisdictional issues such as rules of procedure and evidence, rights of the accused, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to name but a few. The keynote introductory address was given by
Judge Sang-Hyun Song of the International
Criminal Court.
Participants for the course came from countries all over the world. The ICHR also obtained funding from the Open Society
Institute which enabled the Centre to give scholarships to four students from nonratifying countries to attend the course.
Doctoral Seminar 2005
The Irish Centre for Human Rights hosted its annual doctoral seminar in May. This is the fourth year of the seminar and it continues to go from strength to strength. Visiting academics included Prof. Fionnuala Ní
Aoláin of University of Ulster; Prof. David
Kretzmer of Hebrew University; Prof. Alexandre Sicilianos of the University of Athens and Dr. Markus Schmidt of the Human
Rights Committee. Students were given the opportunity to present on their research, while receiving constructive feedback from the panel.
Pictured above are PhD students at the annual doctoral seminar, held from 2-6 May 2005

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Volume 5, Is sue 4
ICHR Continues Lunchtime Seminar Series
Over the past number of months the Irish
Centre for Human Rights has continued its successful lunchtime seminar series with a number of distinguished visitors to the Centre. In April of this year, Professor Kevin
Boyle of Essex University visited the Centre to give a short talk and discuss contemporary issues of international law with students. In
May, Professor Frits Kalshoven presented a seminar on the issue of collective punishment. Prof. Kalshoven is a former professor of international law at Leiden University and former president of the IHL Fact-Finding
Pictured above with Prof. William Schabas,
Director of the Irish Centre for Human
Rights, is Prof. Frits Kalshoven, who presented a seminar at the Centre in May
Model Transitional Codes Project
As part of the Model Codes for Post Conflict Criminal Justice Project, the Irish Centre for
Human Rights and its partner, the United States Institute of Peace, hosted an expert meeting in Washington DC from 12-14 July. The meeting centred on police powers in post conflict states and brought together various policing and legal experts to conduct an in-depth review of a component of the model codes; the Model Law Enforcement Powers Act. Participants hailed from Nepal, Fiji, the US, Ireland, Slovenia, Pakistan, the U.K. and Sri Lanka. The
Model Codes Project, and a related rule of law training project, will continue until 2006 under the direction of Vivienne O’Connor.
ICHR to Host AHRI Conference
The Irish Centre for Human Rights will host a conference on “Past, Present and Future Policies of the EU Foreign Policy in the field of Human Rights, Peace and Security” from September 30 to October 2. The conference is held in connection with the 6th Annual Conference of the Association of Human Rights Institutes (AHRI) but is focusing on research underway within an EU-sponsored research project on human rights, peace and security in EU foreign policy (a COST-research project). The conference will commence on Friday September 30 with key note addresses from external experts on the four sub-themes of the COST research project: (i) peacekeeping/peace enforcement, (ii) international criminal tribunals,
(iii) development cooperation and the (iv) UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the
High Commissioner on National Minorities of the OSCE. Among the external key note speakers are Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan (former Acting UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights), Dr. Hadewych Hazelzet (the Council of the European Union) and Prof. Nigel D.
White (University of Sheffield). The conference will then proceed with presentation of papers from members of the four Working Groups, each dealing with one of the four subthemes of the COST-research project, and with PhD presentations. For further information see www.conference.ie. or email k.mansson1@nuigalway.ie. Publications
A list of publications by staff and students of the
Irish Centre for Human
Rights can be viewed at: http://www.nuigalway.ie/ human_rights/publications.htm
LL.M Class Trip to the Hague
In April of this year, students from the LL.M programme visited the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, where they were given a tour of the premises and had a questions and answers session with President Meron and Judge Schomburg of the Court
Students also visited the International Criminal Court
(ICC) where they had meetings with representatives of the various organs of the Court.
Students had the opportunity to visit the International
Court of Justice where they had a tour of the Peace
Palace and a meeting with Judge Buergenthal.
The trip is set to become an annual event for students of the programme.
Pictured above on the steps of the
Peace Palace with Prof. Schabas are students from the LL.M programme who visited the Hague in April.

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Volume 5, Is sue 4
Recent Visitors to the Irish
Centre for Human Rights:
Frits Kalshoven
Former President,
International Humanitarian
Fact-finding Commission
Future Developments in Refugee Law Conference
A number of recognised international experts on refugee and asylum law were in Galway on
Saturday 28th May to attend a joint one-day conference, organised by the Irish Centre for
Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway and the Human Rights Centre,
Queen’s University Belfast. Over one hundred delegates comprised of academics, civil servants, legal practitioners and students attended the conference, which was opened by President Iognáid Ó Muircheartaigh. Professor James Hathaway, director of the University of
Michigan’s Program in Refugee and Asylum Law, and Senior Visiting Research Associate at
Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Program delivered the keynote address. Professor
Hathaway is a leading authority on international refugee law and author of a recent analysis of the nature of the legal duty to protect refugees, The Rights of Refugees under International
Law (2005). Other speakers at the prestigious conference included Professor Colin Harvey of
Queen’s University Belfast; Dr. Siobhán Mullally of University College Cork and Ciara
Smyth of NUI Galway.
Kevin Boyle,
Professor of Law, Essex
University
Irish Centre for Human Rights: w w w . n u i g a l w a y . i e / human_rights
E m a i l : humanrights@nuigalway.ie
ICHR Receives Funding for Ireland-China Exchange
The Irish Centre for Human Rights has received €80,000 in funding from the Developmental
Co-operation Ireland for an Ireland China Human Rights Academic Exchange. The overall aim of the project is to promote the rule of law and respect for human rights in the People’s
Republic of China by building on the relationship developed between the Irish Centre for
Human Rights and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. The project will provide China with human rights expertise at the highest academic level from Ireland in both the context of the ratification and implementation of the two international human rights covenants and other human rights instruments. This will place Ireland in a central role in the development of human rights in China. The project aims to build upon and deepen the exchanges and debates of the EU-China Human Rights Network process. Such an endeavour will work to create a mutual understanding, in both Ireland and China on the questions raised by the ratification and implementation of the Covenants. For further information contact Peter Fitzmaurice of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at peter.fitzmaurice@nuigalway.ie
Pictured right is Professor William Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. Professor Schabas delivered a lecture on international criminal law at a conference held in the university on June 27.
Publications
Staff and students of the Centre have published widely and given numerous conference presentations in the last number of months. For full details see the Centre website at http:// www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights/publications.htm
The   Irish   Centre   for
Human   Rights   Bulletin   is   compiled   and   edited   by
Edel   Hughes.
If you wish to sign up for any of the above activities or to receive information regarding the work the Centre carries out, please to not hesitate to contact us at:
Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway, Ireland.
Phone: +353-(0)91-493798,
Fax: +353-(0)91-494575,
Email: humanrights@nuigalway.ie
Website: www.nuigalway.ie/human_rights