WORKSHOP ON DISPLACED PERSONS AND ARMED CONFLICT: THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY AND TO RETURN HOME UNDER CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL LAW
Newcastle Law School
Saturday 8 December 2012
The workshop is generously funded by the British Academy as part of Dr Katselli’s Small Research Award and supported by the Newcastle Forum for Human Rights and Social Justice
This workshop will examine how property rights and the rights of displaced people to return home are protected under international law. Whilst human rights gain significance in a global context the rights of the dispossessed affected by armed conflict have attracted little attention. Similarly, controversy remains as to whether a right to return exists. The workshop aims to clarify the legal regime in relation to these rights and to investigate how they are protected under human rights and humanitarian law. The increasing interaction between these two fields and the necessity to protect fundamental rights both in peace and in war, reveal the importance of this topic. This is all the more relevant as armed conflicts around the globe continue, exposing individuals to serious violations of fundamental rights. It also has contemporary significance amidst claims that these issues should be settled collectively during peace negotiations. This approach suggests that the fate of these rights should be left outside the ambit and reach of international law. It also implies that States have unlimited powers in restricting these rights. The workshop will provide a forum of discussion on how international law responds to such challenges by bringing together the expertise of judges and legal officers working in international courts and tribunals as well as academics and practitioners who have published and worked on this area of international law.
Speakers:
H.E. Christos Rozakis (President, Administrative Tribunal of the Council of Europe; Former Judge and Vice President of the European Court of Human Rights) The Taking of Property of Displaced Persons in the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights
Dr Antoine Buyse (Associate Professor and senior researcher, Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Utrecht University) Housing Restitution for Displaced Persons in Postwar Bosnia: Failure or Success?
Mr Stefan von Raumer (Advocate) Restitution and Compensation as a result of German Reunification
Dr James Sweeney (Senior Lecturer, Durham University) Restitution, Restorative Justice, and "Transitional Relativism” Professor
Tom Allen (Durham University) Property, Homes, and Mass Movements in India since Partition
Dr Elena Katselli (Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University) Demopoulos and the Road to Property Restitution and to Return Home
Mr Pieter de Baan (Director, Trust Fund for Victims, International Criminal Court) TBC
Mr Matthew Gillett (Legal Counsel, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) Collective Dislocation: crimes of displacement, property-deprivation and discrimination under international criminal law
For more information please contact elena.katselli@ncl.ac.uk
published on: 30th November 2012