In Syria, for example, over 500,000 have been killed, many at the hands of the Assad regime which the UN has accused of, among other things, using chemical weapons and exterminating, torturing, murdering, raping and imprisoning thousands of civilians. In Yemen, the crisis there has led to a famine of catastrophic proportions and the death of as many as 50,000 people. For the Rohingya, over 700,000 people have been driven from their homes and a United Nations report in 2018 concluded that military leaders there should be prosecuted for genocide and other war crimes.

Our panelists will focus on the role of universal jurisdiction to achieve justice when governments have failed to do so, when the United Nations Security Council is unable to refer cases to the ICC, when politics at the United Nations or more broadly within the international community thwart or hinder justice. The discussion will focus on where universal jurisdiction has been successful, its limitations, where it has failed and why and where it can be successful.

Speakers will include:

• Beth Van Schaack - Executive Editor, Just Security blog
• Wolfgang Kaleck - Founder, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
• Anwar al-Bunni - Syrian Center For Legal Researches and Studies

The latter will focus on Syria as a case study where universal jurisdiction has been used to issue arrest warrants for actors accused of war crimes (link).

This program is presented by the ABA International Human Rights Committees of the Section of International Law and Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, and cosponsored by the ABA Center for Human Rights and SIL's International Criminal Law Committee.