HREA and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government are co-sponsoring the presentation “A Human Rights View of the Law of Armed Conflict” by Dr. Gerd Oberleitner (University of Graz, Austria).
WHEN: Wednesday, April 20 from 1:30-3:00 pm
WHERE: Harvard Kennedy School, Carr Center Conference Room, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA
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A Human Rights View of the Law of Armed Conflict
While there is growing consensus, supported by recent international case law, that international human rights law continues to apply in armed conflict, and that international human rights law and international humanitarian law are converging, the precise contours of this development remain uncertain. Over the past two decades, international human rights bodies in the UN and in regional human rights systems have found themselves confronted with situations of armed conflict brought before them.
The presentation will survey how these bodies have responded to such situations and, in particular, what their approach has been to the potential application of both international human rights and international humanitarian law; which repercussions their findings may have for our understanding of ius in bello; if they have the potential to contribute to the development of this legal regime; and if they can provide effective remedies in situations of armed conflict.
Dr. Gerd Oberleitner is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of International Law and International Relations of the University of Graz (Austria). His research interests are in international human rights law, international humanitarian law, human security and the law of international organizations. From 2002 to 2004 he was Lecturer in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and subsequently Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights until 2007. For more than fifteen years, he has taught international law and international human rights law in a number of institutions and summer schools and teaches regularly in the Venice and Sarajevo Master Programs on Human Rights and Democratization. He has been an instructor for HREA e-learning courses since 2003. His latest book is Global Human Rights Institutions: Between Remedy and Ritual (Cambridge, Polity, 2007).