Workshop - Human Security and War Against Impunity: Yesterday’s Discourses & Today’s Consequences

Conference venue: Centre for Area Studies | Thomaskirchhof 20 | 04109 Leipzig
Period: May 24-25, 2014

The workshop will concentrate on the concepts of human security, war against impunity and the responsibility to protect. Invited international scholars and practitioners will discuss whether these ideas motivating the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC in the Hague) changed anything about conflict, conflict resolution, transitional justice practices and humanitarian help.
The workshop will run over the course of two days, from Saturday, 24 May (all day) to lunchtime Sunday, 25 May.

One of the invited scholars, Benjamin Schiff (Oberlin College, USA), who wrote the book Building the International Criminal Court, will take up some of the discussions leading up to the building of the ICC in the Hague.

Other speakers like Terry Karl, Roger Peterson, Katarina Ristic and Gada Mahrouse will discuss post-ICC developments.

Terry Karl (Stanford U, USA) is a renowned expert on Latin and Central America. She served as an advisor to chief UN peace negotiators in El Salvador and Guatemala. Prof. Karl has been an expert witness in major human rights and war crimes trials in the United States that have set important legal precedents. Most notably are the first jury verdict in US history against military commanders for murder and torture under the doctrine of command responsibility, and the first jury verdict in US history finding commanders responsible for “crimes against humanity” under the doctrine of command responsibility. In January 2006, her testimony formed the basis for a landmark victory for human rights on the statute of limitations issue.

Roger Peterson (MIT, USA) has done in situ empirical research on violence and violent networks, mostly in Southeastern Europe and Colombia. He became well known for his three books: Resistance and Rebellion, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe and Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict published with the Cambridge University Press.

Katarina Ristic is currently a postdoc fellow at the University of Leipzig’s Graduate Centre Humanities and Social Sciences with a research interest in transitional justice, memory studies, gender studies and civil society. Her contribution to the workshop will focus on the “ICTY and the Genocide Debates on the former Yugoslavia”.

Gada Mahrouse (Concordia U, Canada), is currently a guest researcher at the Leibniz Institute at the University of Leipzig, has been involved in a recent Canadian debate on conflict resolution/multiculturalism and done anti-racist research on political tourism and transnational humanitarian networks.

The second day of the workshop focuses primarily on human security issues in Africa, whereby Line E Gissel (Aarhus U, Denmark) presents some insights into “how, when and why ICC interventions threaten peace processes: a study of Kenya and Uganda”. This is followed by Ulf Engel (U Leipzig) highlighting the limits of human security and “non-indifference”. Ulrike von Pilar (founder Médecins sans Frontières, Germany) will emphasize some threats to humanitarian action. Helena Flam will finally round up the workshop by conceiving transnational justice as an emotional regime and social field.

The workshop was conceptualized by Prof. Dr. Helena Flam and is hosted by the DFG Research Training Group (GK1261): “Critical Junctures of Globalization”.