 Okay, so I have to start, of course. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Maria Varaki and I'm very happy to welcome you to the next webinar of the War Crimes Research Group series, which is run together, we run together with Professor James Gao and Professor Rachel Kerr. Today, we are particularly excited to have with us Professor Cecilia Bayet from the University of Oslo, who is going to talk about the international law of peace based on her very extensive and pioneered work on the law of peace. Having said that, I would like to briefly introduce Cecilia, although she doesn't need a massive introduction, and then I will give her the floor. So Professor Bayet is director of the master programs in international law and co-director of the research group on human rights and conflict, peace and security law at the University of Oslo. Her research is transnational and cross disciplinary, that is upon issues of international law, public international law, but also human rights, refugee law, counter terrorist, gender, women's rights and of course, peace. Professor Bayet has created the first law course in the world on the international law of peace and she has published, she is a very proliferating writer with a variety of books on the legitimacy of international criminal tribunals, non-state actors of law, cosmopolitan justice and the discontents and more recently she produced three books on the right, on the international law of peace, such as promoting peace through international law, the research handbook on international law and peace and her more recent book publics this year, 2021, on the construction of the customary law of peace, Latin America and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. So being at the work studies department, I couldn't be more happier to have with us Professor Bayet to discuss about her, as I say, innovative work on the international law of peace. Cecilia, thank you so much. You have the floor. Thank you. Thank you very much, Maria. It is an absolute pleasure to be here at Kings. My warm thanks to you for inviting me to be part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Department of War Studies and although it may seem ironic to have a peace scholar celebrating a war college, it should be noted that the Peace Research Institute of Oslo actually has a seminar room called the War Room. So there is recognition of the need to study and understand these diametric concepts in tandem. So my screen goes, scroll down and I guess. There we go. Yes, there we go. Thank you. Peace has evolved from the notion of a natural right to peaceful coexistence recognized by Grosius, Pufendorf and Vitelle. Here you see them reiterating this notion of peace being something that is owe to society but also to people in other areas, this idea of promoting a coexistence within and among nations. And this was continued in the 1959 Dandung Declaration of Asian-African Conference in which you see an irideration of the standards that we have within the UN Charter aiming to promote negative peace. And this was linked to the non-aligned movement and reiterated by China and the Soviet Union. And you see this most recently in the Declaration on Principles of International Law put out in 2016 by Russia and China. But if we look at the framework of international law within the UN Charter, you see recognition of peace as a type of universal group norm, where the qualities of it are both substantive that it's an end that we aim to reach as a community. But it's also a means and therefore the articulation that we have an obligation of pursuit of Pacific means of settlement of disputes. And this articulation is reiterated not only in the UN Charter, but also across the world within all the regional institutions, as well as within the instruments on human rights, so that you have a linking of the notion that we can only attain peace if we respect human rights, that they are interlength, that they are two umbrella values that go together. And the pluralistic manifestations of peace were recognized by Kelsen as forming a group norm that could be adaptable to local articulation responding to each nation's legal tradition and culture. So it doesn't have to be an identical iteration, it can be something that is flexible. And the uniqueness of peace in being both an end and a means of the transnational system in being able to be pursued by peaceful means means that it requires us to think creatively in the ways about to go about implementing peace. Now, when you think of the state of the world today, we see that many of the challenges are not related to interstate conflict because we see a decrease in interstate conflict. What we see is internal violence. And when you look at the normative instruments, the only articulation you have for recognition of a right to internal peace is actually within the African Charter on human rights where peoples, the group, the society have a right to both national and international peace. And the African system goes on to emit a normative instrument that also specifically links the interests of women as having a particular role to play in peacemaking. So Rosa Friedman is a scholar who has been following and tracking the evolution of human rights instruments over time. And she's identified something that she calls a second wave of third generation rights. Now we see peace then being articulated as a bundle of communitarian human rights that are markers of what you can call a post-western normative evolution of international law. So the other rights that you're hearing about in the news are solidarity, which is a draft that's being promoted by the UN expert at present, the right to development, which is soon to be approved as a convention, and the right to a healthy environment, which was recently recognized by the UN Human Rights Council. So these new generations of norms, they link back to already established human rights norm, and they form a bridge intended to open our minds at looking at human rights as something that will move forward in the interests of future generations. Thereby, we would be able to address challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, forced migration, pandemics, and economic inequalities within nations. So if you see the articulation within the declaration of the right to peace, this is not a negative piece, it's a positive piece, because they promote peace as something closely tied to concepts of tackling equality and non-discrimination. It also has been articulated as a UN sustainable development goal. Here you see them talking internally to promoting peace within societies for sustainable development, thereby linking it also to another umbrella goal and providing access to justice to all. So the pluralistic attributes of peace actually enable it to serve a foundation for policy development at the national, regional, and international levels in the post-Western age in order to address the challenges related to increased social polarization and populist authoritarianism. So the primary research, if you look at peace scholars, most of them have been writing about negative peace, the absence of violence. They're looking at the prohibition of aggression and negative peace, according to Kelsen, was the only kind of peace that could be considered law. But I suggest that at present, much more attention should be placed on positive peace. And these are the characteristics that were advocated by Johann Galton around non-discrimination, equality, social justice, and cooperation. The challenges that we see regarding territorial disputes, many of them, for example, the maritime delimitation cases, are being managed by the ICJ and by bilateral negotiations. So this is following in accordance with the requirements of UN Charter Article 33, which calls on states to follow a mandatory good faith attempt to seek a peaceful solution of all disputes by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, and judicial settlements. So when I was looking at your website to understand more what your institution works with, I found this wonderful quote by Sir Michael Howard in which he articulated the problem of the 20th century as being under what circumstances can armed force be used in the only way in which he can be legitimate to use it to ensure a lasting and stable peace. And then I read on that he had actually produced books in which he looked at the notion of peace as being something that is invented and something that was in crisis because of the problem we have of the erosion of state society in modern times. And when we look back at the experience we've had since he wrote these statements, we see that there's a shift. We're in the 21st century now and we recognize that the pursuit of attaining a sustainable peace actually requires other tools and strategies because this is an underscored by the uneven application of responsibility to protect actions which often fail to fulfill their missions and had an opaque system of accountability. In addition to the war on terror post 9-11 and the use of self-defense against non-state actors, this in correlation with the view that the real challenge is internal violence within states really called as by Mary Caldor as being new wars goes along with the tendency to use narratives now on prevention, on use post-bellum that we're moving in a direction to prevent reoccurrence of violence. So I suggest that the question of peace in the positive variant of non-discrimination equality, social justice and cooperation can help states civil society and IOs articulate approaches to address the root causes of internal violence and polarization. And instead of having a top down approach to peace building, I'd advocate a bottoms up perspective that enables societies to design the strategy for peace that works best for their particular context. So for lawyers then what we do when we go down to the national level, the first thing lawyers look at look at are the national frameworks and we have many scholars like Haverly and Gilliam that have really shown a breadth of different iterations of peace in national constitutions that vary from the negative to the positive level. So you'll find some constitutions that talk about prohibition of aggression that promote peaceful conflict resolution and that talk about the obligation to use the mechanisms within regional or universal groups that they belong to be they the ICJ in the UN or regional institutions. You also have other types of constitutions that renounce the use of national foreign military. Costa Rica does not have an army and many other nations will not allow foreign troops in their territory or they will prohibit weapons of mass disruptions or nuclear weapons and this links also to the increase in references to the peace zones which extend to the maritime territory and apply then to the transport of nuclear weapons on submarines that have been in the news lately. The third form would be constitutions that link human rights specifically to peace and the fourth are that there are constitutions that actually give people the right to bring a case to court to articulate their right to enjoy peace either nationally or internationally or to enforce the state to pursue its duty to provide peace to the people or to articulate the duty of other members of society to implement peace and these cases have been really interesting. For example in Costa Rica you had a law student who was upset because the government had a website advocating its allegiance with the United States and the invasion of Iraq and so the law student looked at the constitution and said I think that this is illegal and he brought the case and the court agreed with him the court agreed that it was in violation of the constitution and of international law and therefore the website had to come down so you've had some cases in which you have had courts very eager to recognize the obligation to abide by constitutional standards and the last category then is a culture of peace this I think is really really exciting and it moves us in a direction that lawyers are not that comfortable with but it goes into the idea of recognizing that culture of peace involves creating new dialogues of cooperation and mutual respect and this involves creating teaching programs within schools to teach the new generations how to resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner and also the use of ADR say in labor conflicts which in areas like Latin America can get very violent so these types of normative instruments are really relevant in terms of trying to provide a framework in which you can work for promotion of peace in practice but when I was writing the the last book on Latin America and the creation of the customary law of peace about every country in Latin America exploded in a range of protests and what we saw was responses by the state that were largely oppressive these types of protests were advocating recognition of second generation rights to an adequate standard of living concern for horizon food prices in a lack of equal access to education there were protests addressing corruption and impunity as well as what you call third generation collective rights you had indigenous groups that were protesting the poisoning of their waters by oil companies and these articulations of demands were largely met by responses by police and by military that were excessive so when the concern of peace is raised within Latin America it comes with the concern that it is serving the interests of the state in terms of control so it's an instrument of the state to have control over society and this is in keeping with the origin of Latin American countries of having a liberal status orientation at their foundation and trying to to inhibit repression so what we see is international actors like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will issue provisional orders trying to defend human rights defenders and open the scope for freedom of expression and association defending peace in the indirect way where they're actually focusing on what you call first generation rights but it's addressing cases that at the base are founded on violation of second generation or third generation rights and the second way that international actors like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights or the committees can uphold what we call positive peace is through issues of what you call non-repetition orders and these non-repetition orders will address the violations of non-discrimination and equality of vulnerable people including children women indigenous people afro descendants disabled people the elderly migrants detained people lbgt and human rights defenders so judge Farrah McGregor identified a state duty of exceptional due diligence due to vulnerable people and the phenomenon of intersectional vulnerability including poverty and marginalization and exclusion and he said that poverty and inequality and social exclusion are invisible walls that separate societies and these are the walls that we have to knock down to achieve development and democracy and peace and so vulnerable groups face the challenges relating to recognition of their property rights or protection from displacement deportation forced sterilization sexual violence and threats to life so what non-repetition guarantees do is that they call for actual education again culture of peace education on non-discrimination and equality of people in power meaning the border guards the police the army the judges and even medical doctors and this approach is actually in keeping with the orientation of peace as a third generation right that actually calls for the recognition of duties by the state to ensure respect for the right by state actors and civil society and non-state actors so compliance with these types of non-state non non-repetition orders could be considered actually the key to attaining a quality peace so here you can consider the caveat there was a scholar named Kenneth Boulding who was really critical of positive peace because he said that this is not capable of providing you know solid answers to concrete problems and I argue that actors like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights actually demonstrate that they can offer concrete recommendations to address the root causes of violence through these non-repetition guarantees and the problem that we have here is that states are not necessarily compliant with these orders because of internal resistance within societies and a lack of political will so when we think about how can we define peace in a way that would be contemporary that would be addressed the challenges that we see today one is that the culture of peace approach does include the tolerance of differences in equality acceptance of multiculturalism the notion of the importance of peace education sustainable development of gender equality and the ability of communities actually to be empowered to have spaces for agency and communication to articulate and design their own vision for internal peace and cultural peace actually it's really useful today because it seeks to combat cultural violence that we're seeing in which structural violence is actually being promoted through religion through art through language through ideology or through science to promote discriminatory or exclusionary policies and these includes the very many examples we have today of hate speech of xenophobic narratives and discriminatory attitudes within society so the programs that are promoting culture of peace can be found within countries like Peru and schools the Dominican Republic they're often using UNESCO as their lead partner and the current president of the Inter-American Court is convinced that the only way that she can protect peace is to actually protect the vulnerable groups like women and so she said that the court protects peace because the the court protects women and women are the heart of peace and so the review of the cases that have to do with gender issues such as IVF same-sex marriages and violence against women were really interesting because they came at a time when you actually had mass movements of women on the streets of Latin America on both sides so you had pro women's rights women's right to protection from sexual violence to abortion the same-sex marriage and you had many other women and men who were on the streets as well demanding recognition of what they call family rights and these protest manifestations on the streets resulted in actual legal briefs amicus briefs being drafted by transnational NGOs on both sides that were then delivered to the courts and then you ended up getting decisions advisory opinions from the Inter-American Court in which the majority decision will uphold equal rights to same-sex marriage for example but you will have dissenting opinions that will be drafted almost verbatim copying the language within the conservative NGOs and what you then then get is the lifting of the battle for hearts and minds from the streets to the courts and the language that's incorporated there is to sort of promote a degree of recognition of the plural voices that we have within society as articulated on the narratives that are presented within the international courts and what's interesting is that you view that the narratives that are presented are ones that bring up issues of legitimacy of the international system as we designed it of what our courts supposed to do what is the role of the advisory function and how do we manage when polarization within societies is lifted to the international system how do we achieve a balance there so the new phase of the promotion of positive peace and the aspiration of an internal sustainable positive peace right now is very complex it's really demanding but it opens the door for international and national lawyers to cooperate to identify creative solutions to the root causes of violence and I identify here some of the key challenges that I'm saying well one is that we see we do see a trend like Michael Howard said that we do see a trend towards constitutional rejection that states are weakened either where you see the executive strengthened to the detriment of the judiciary or the congress polarized you see elected authoritarianism nativism and corruption you see a backlash against not only the inter-american court but all human rights courts and committees you have real a questioning of whether the lbgt cases or decisions regarding prohibition of amnesties are things that are contentious and a real concern about how do we build a bridge between liberal and conservative elements within society now one thing the un has started is a program called faith for rights in which they try to build bridges between faith communities and the un human rights bodies and this is an area of potential great possibilities for cooperation especially when you think about the third generation rights being communitarian orientation that there is a possibility that we can view bridges to be built on them the tension that is the most problematic is the priority of states to use peace as an instrument of control against the first generation rights of expression and association and the limitation of civil society of their ability to use peace culture of peace as emancipation because we see civil society under attack under the guise of counterterrorism counter separatism counter extremism so going into that area and trying to open the spaces for a healthy act of civil society is a real challenge how do we construct a pro hominae version of peace means a pro human rights that that idea that peace is linked to human rights and the idea that a quality piece actually requires us looking at the use of the procedures that we identified in the beginning of conflict resolution of recognition of procedural values like mutual respect and cooperation to be promoted and the problem with using courts is that you'll always have a side that wins and the side that loses so the idea that maybe we shouldn't be going to court to solve some of these conflicts means that we maybe we need to use new approaches that don't have anything to do with litigation because litigation won't necessarily bring us to peace even though they will solve a legal question and the last element is this idea that human rights democracy and development are values that were articulated in many of the instruments as going together these umbrella values all of them have different levels of support in international society today so maybe we need to re look at them and discuss to what extent they can be used to strengthen each other and how we can develop them in a common manner so those are my reflections today thank you so much thank you so much to see you this was so interesting so read I can say I was taking notes while you were talking all the time you know about the evolution of our understanding of peace you know as a right as well in international law and especially the shift from negative to positive peace you know and with the third generation which is fascinating I can see there are some questions already on the Q&A I have my own questions but I would like to give the floor and encourage our participants you know to put questions raise their hand if they can also want you know to ask the question so I'm going to I see from Helena who who asked a question do you really believe that the universal definition of sustainable peace will help contribute to increasing cultural peace internationally and in the local environment or this is more of a symbolic definition for international NGOs what ways are more productive to increase cultural peace around the world maybe you can start with that yeah that's it yeah Helena question thank you great question Helena okay um so the if you look at the right to peace the way it's drafted it's it's drafted in a in a broad manner um where they left it sort of vague this they you it should enjoy your peace in relation to human rights and it's drafted vaguely as most of international law is in order to allow states to match um the narrative to their national um understanding so I show that the constitutions have different orientations and so when you look at the declaration of the right to peace it should be read in harmony um with the the notions that they have in their internal system but when you think at um uh really contentious cases like Venezuela for example one of the biggest advocates of the right to peace is Maduro so Maduro is arguing that that he is defending the Venezuelan people's right to peace because he's defending the state against intervention in the form of course of sanctions by the United States that he feels are um limiting uh the people's rights uh to food right and um he's uh very concerned about possible military intervention as well but Venezuela was one of the nations that voted for the right to peace and if you look at the definition of the right to peace um there is an understanding that Maduro shares the obligation to ensure the well-being of his own society and so therefore he can't only um present a version of a right to peace that would be negative in terms of non-intervention but he also has a positive obligation to ensure the well-being of society and so that it can be used against him had that his understanding of the right to peace is not in keeping with what you'd call a pro-home in a peace so it might be uh a symbolic value as your as you're stating Helena but um we use narratives today in international affairs and international law in order to promote policy changes and in order to promote actual practical changes so the building of the narrative is is usually something that is very sophisticated and and and you'll see how it's manipulated and used by other side because they they are trying to implement a concrete change I think that the most productive form of uh promoting culture of peace is to strengthen those type institutions within the UN system and the regional system that have never received enough funding we have UNESCO and we have peace commissions at every level the UN level and the the regional levels these places are underfunded and um if maybe we took part of the budget that we use on counterterrorism and counter extremism and moved it to UNESCO and to to the commission of peace institutions that maybe we we would be able to support the school systems um and uh the ADR local mechanisms there are many many many children for example in Colombia after the signing of the peace accord that um were not um considered to have been recruited by the FARC they were considered to have been recruited by other non-state actors today we call them transnational criminal actors involved in drug trade these children are not uh included within uh programs on of official reintegration more often they're put into um processing for judicial processing of accountability for crimes and there you're looking at um Colombia possibly going in a direction that is going to weaken the peace because instead of sending the children within culture of peace programs to enable mutual respect and account of um uh cooperation they're being held accountable um uh due to their misfortune of being linked to the to the wrong types of groups in the wrong time thank you very much about that it's quite interesting that you mentioned Maduro thinking about the current developments we have you know before the ICC where the prosecutor decided to open investigations you know in Venezuela you know for crimes and nonity but I will ask more about that there is another question by Catherine Catherine first of all thanks you you know for the very interesting presentation and this is wondering which impacts the emergence of the digital space as an inherently transnational sphere has on peace and security do you think that she has to what extent can human rights mechanism respond to these challenges you know when yeah please thank you that's that Catherine that's a great question um we have like everything positive and negative so um I'll start with the negatives the negatives is that we see that the that the extreme right has more control of the digital space than what we'd call the liberal the liberal um interest group that they have been uh more expert at um delivering their narratives the narratives that we're fighting over um the same with extremist groups that seek to radicalize our youth um have been very very sophisticated dominating these spaces and we are light years behind them so um that's why you're seeing output from the UN um addressing maybe the need to relook at freedom of expression in a need to look at to what extent it promotes um bigotry hate speech um structural violence against marginalized groups and and this type of the robot action plan for human rights you might want to look for against hate speech uh this action plan creates a six point frame framework for addressing speech that is out there in in the digital space that is harmful so they're advocating that states actually go in and uh corporations like uh facebook which i think has used the robot action plan uh to try and limit um what is out there on the positive is that for countries that are locked like uh cashmere you know in minamar and even venezuela the venezuelans are everywhere they and um many have come out of cashmere as well you have refugees and expat groups in many different areas and the only thing um that they can do is actually use social media to talk about um the uh human rights concerns that they have one of which is being separated from their families and so um here you get a possibility for people to not have to rely on waiting to go to court and get the right to truth um in 20 years from international court but seeking the right to truth immediately on the digital platform in talking about the types of violations they've been subjected to and telling their stories and in demanding peace uh in real time so doing this in videos and movies um is actually uh really really enlightening in terms of the possibilities of promoting peace excellent thank you very much um is there any other questions someone would like to raise uh her his hand before i step in because i have a couple of questions or i don't know if cecilia would you like to to to comment further on something of the issues that we have already discussed okay we still have time so um i want to ask about three points you know if it is okay you know i found it really really uh fascinating your observation that maybe we should move beyond litigation okay when it comes to to peace and maybe some respect and and this is very very um intriguing when it comes from a from lawyers you know from legal scholars you know because usually uh one of our first courses let's go to court okay let's go to court litigation strategical litigation i'm not here to diminish that but but it's a valuable tool and it's something that we see in the climate on the climate change uh from you know that strategic litigation linked to human rights becomes more and more active and i was wondering you know what are your thoughts about that and and uh to what extent do you sense that the understanding of peace differ of course it's a mass broader concept you know but to what extent you know uh can allow this moving beyond litigation that's the first question so if it's okay i can see that when all the q and a so maybe i should um i should stop but if you have time towards the end i found also very interesting you know your latest book about latin america and already from your presentation you focus a lot on the inter-america court of human rights and developments in latin america and maybe you know um obviously latin america has a distinctive um it is it is a different uh region but again you know this further development of peace there is very intriguing and maybe it would be nice if you could elaborate a little bit of that and then i will go into the questions if it's okay we have the questions you know yeah um uh okay so beyond litigation well i started thinking about beyond litigation when i was talking to the lawyers of the court who were a little nervous that i was raising peace as something that would be justiciable they were the lawyers were were wondering what what is the added value of making peace justiciable isn't peace one of those things that it's better to to address it within a non-latidist setting and um i started reflecting that the value comes precisely in the non-repetition um guarantees that it's there when um the court is issuing um orders that are seeking to repair structural violence that are thinking in the long term these are orders that cannot be implemented even though the court is trying and they try they issue orders that say okay this should be implemented within one year hopefully within two years or within five years and obviously there are lots of delays but but um it's it's it's something that could enable not just the concrete parties to a specific legal conflict um that it's also um there are many people and groups that don't have the luxury of having connections to lawyers in new york or washington or even costa rica so that when you have for example um the awestinji case in nicaragua um the inner american court of human rights received a lot of attention because they recognized the obligation of the state to demarcate the indigenous people's um territory and so um all the scholars around the world wrote very long law review articles discussing how important this decision was and um when the state went to demarcate the land they found that there were other indigenous smaller groups that had not been represented in costa rica that had not had contact with the lawyer so it wasn't that easy because it it's never just a and b usually um in situations that have erupted in violence there are a plethora of actors in interests that are unlikely to be represented within litigation so invariably when you're seeking a sustainable peace you're going to have to have a mechanism in which you include more voices more interest groups um in order to find what we call the long-term solutions that go beyond the concrete decision for the legal question and that's why we move away from the litigation model model and we saw that with the icc because we we found that victims who had given testimony in the icc felt that they um their lives were not repaired by participating in the icc that may you may have gotten a judgment holding someone accountable for sexual violence but in the end they didn't have an increased quality of life that they would have liked to have received some development aid in order to have a house or schooling for their children and none of that was provided by the court so their conception of justice and peace um had nothing to do with litigation that's in a very important uh learning point that we that we received from that experience thank you very much and i don't know about latin america i can see there is a question on chat by an unknown certain d and and i'm trying to summarize i would focus basically on the last question on the last part of the question uh would say is that uh based on sir michael howards um um understanding about the efforts of good men to abolish war only succeed in making it worse was it he he or she i don't know who is our attendee who remains anonymous um yeah preferably would be nice if we had the person you know uh so he see us uh does that not make you a little bit worried about simply promoting peace uh advocated diversional funding from keeping people people safer and more secure with counterterrorism uh so um please just read the question you know yeah so you would like well i teach i teach counterterrorism so obviously i'm not going to advocate completely doing away with counterterrorism but um from teaching counterterrorism um the course i teach is actually called human rights and counterterrorism and when i teach it people who come from the counterterrorism agencies attend because um they don't have some so much of a focus on human rights where they're working um to the extent they do it may be mostly on due process rights and procedural issues regarding litigation prosecution um but the human rights approach and the peace approach um is one that goes into soft mechanisms um of prevention that are very relevant to counterterrorism so i think they go hand in hand as a tool but they they have been fragmented in practice because of the division of institutions and agencies now counterterrorism and counter extremism and counter separatism has managed to become mainstreamed into every UN agency i can think of as well as the NGOs all of them are doing counterterrorism and extremism um so i wouldn't be surprised is it even the peace commission or um UNESCO has somebody working on on something to do with counterterrorism so it's not that you have to pick one or the other it's about um maybe removing from the periphery the idea that that peace is something nebulous and not concrete as um as as kelson and others were were afraid of i've showed you that the court has managed to give very concrete uh recommendations and conclusions that are addressing concrete um aspects of structural violence that are the elements of uh root causes for violence and radicalization so if you don't deal with creating peace you're going to have problems that that uh be appear uh within the sphere of counterterrorism anyway so i think they go together yes thank you very much and actually what was very interesting is was especially why well how you were highlighting the shift from the negative exactly as you say to positive peace you know including all these other uh elements uh cecilia it's i have the privilege you know to to to ask uh one more question if that's okay before i go back to to the audience and i was singing today before we start i was reading the news on guardian and apparently you know we have a new kind of war this is at least the eu talks about the hybrid warfare and that's the instrumentalization of migrants by countries such as uh belarus towards the borders with paulans the borders of the eu the eu and nato talk about the hybrid warfare you know and they're under attack even and i was yes i smile as well when i was reading that and i was wondering you know your whole work on the sustain of the right to peace you know and especially because you mentioned also we go into this third generation the communitarian aspects of of right how could that be kind of utilized or what kind of sensibility or framework normative framework could provide in these discourses as legal scholars as people who will teach students thank you well it's about returning to the canteen perspective said that no people should be a means to an end and that includes refugees so um when we find right refugees being utilized as part of hybrid warfare um this goes against the entire liberal order that we created with the un charter so the initial drafts for the declaration of the right to peace actually included provisions on refugee rights and they were removed in the final version but refugees are human beings and therefore they have the same rights to quality and non-discrimination and the aspiration to enjoy peace and that means the right to seek asylum and not be refueled or turn back at the border this is illegal we have a 1951 convention that has been ratified by these states and they have the obligation even when they act extraterritorially not to refuel these persons so um the problem is the complete lack of political will at present to uh respect the regimes that we created for recognition of refugee rights and um a displacing of them by policies that are um oriented towards securing securing of the borders on on the basis of security or oppressive peace if you want to call it um so I am very saddened by these trends and um I would very much like a return to a recognition of um the spirit of the 1951 convention um which is finding law and um a return to cooperation among states to find solutions for people who are ins and themselves yes thank you very much the more you talk about that the more we realize you know that we can operate as an umbrella norm you know that actually covers all these different issues we deal with there is a follow-up um a common question by Helena and I would I think it's very interesting because Afghanistan uh I was saying to students I was I felt dreadful to walk into class and have a question what about Afghanistan you know and then we we teach about democracy, human rights and peace and what happened 20 years after Afghanistan and then Helena exactly you know highlights the issues that the problems about the the securitization in the name of peace and democracy and the question which is actually I think a wonderful question to wrap up just to extend is uh what kind of productive positive measures can shoot in the national actors uh take you know without causing more harm to local communities so how can you convey uh how can you implement understandings and projects you know in collaboration with local communities in order to contribute to peace at the end of the day thank you yeah well again the the right to peace um underscores equality and non-discrimination as as the key elements of the positive peace so the biggest concern that almost all international donors have are with the situation of Afghani women and girls who compose the majority of persons on the ground in Afghanistan and when we saw um uh the withdrawal away from with Afghanistan uh we saw pictures of women judges going to Greece right Maria he posted that uh the women judges got out and then we saw women girl soccer players that were given asylum in in uh in Italy and then uh we saw uh media people who worked with media or with media related NGOs going to Mexico and the United States and the United States gave asylum to those who had worked with American funded NGOs and with the media outlets um and here we have a problem because you have particular groups very closely tied to again first-generation rights freedom of expression and association and also tried to the um the democratic liberal orientation but most of the women and the girls who are in Afghanistan will have no link to an American funded NGO will not be working for a media corporation and the question is how can we protect them number one against the very real hunger crisis that is coming and has already started to arrive um the threat of displacement those who belong to ethnic minorities are going to be subject to inter intersectional discrimination and forced to undergo practices such as forced marriage or lack of access to education that you know all of these concerns that we've seen placed in the reports by the relevant NGOs and IOs um so the donors have been tied because they feel on the one hand if they if they send aid to the Taliban are they supporting inequality and on the other hand if they don't send aid um are these uh women going to die of hunger or other extreme and then again people should never be a means to an end they are ends of themselves and we're going to have to take the higher the higher um order here and uh obviously uh sufficient humanitarian aid must be provided and continue dialogue uh with the Taliban on uh the importance of equality and on discrimination as an element of sustainable peace has to be emphasized and supported uh through narratives right yeah if that's okay can I can I go back that's the last question you know can I go back to your last book uh about Latin America you know and I was wondering uh about the customer understanding of the right piece but also what are these concrete particular um characteristics you know of Latin America was it that they accounted that they are very strong uh second generation right um constitution with second generation rights as it's in Colombia uh definitely the historical context what makes Latin America the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of course is a very special court but what are these if you could in five minutes you know tell us a little bit more about because I thought it was really fascinating also this focus thank you well I presented to the lawyers of the court I was so excited to show them because none of them have they had never looked at the constitutions of the Latin American country so they had no idea how peace played out in in this region and I was so depressed because because the majority of the iterations of peace in Latin America were the elements of state control that they were um the pieces articulated that you have the right to freedom of expression as long as it's peaceful you have the right to freedom of assembly as long as it's peaceful so it's a status condition of the enjoyment of a liberal right that is the majority the second biggest group was on um what you'd call negative peace iterations having to do with uh the prohibition of aggression the if it's one top international value within Latin America it's it's non-intervention and they've enjoyed what's called the long peace because they have not intervened each other's borders in in in a significant way in a long time but that long peace needs to be created internally and that is the challenge for every Latin American country today so only a few states in Latin America have justiciable versions of peace um three exactly one of which is Colombia so that's why i'm saying that the the rote peace is not necessarily through litigation it is through culture of peace of working with society and and trying to change societies that are very hierarchical and polarized and divided into ones that um are comfortable using mechanisms of cooperation and tolerance and mutual respect in order to solve their problems uh Cecilia uh on that note uh unless you know there is any other uh question or comment i know you know we keep asking you all these questions but it's a as you said it's there are 60 years of the worst status department you know and i don't think that it would could have a better and more um relevant uh discussion on on peace and on the international law of peace because we have different understandings about peace uh and and it's very true you know that we live in an era with massive challenges massive threats between the national peace and security as we say as i mentioned today hybrid warfare uh through migration or not and it's very obvious you know that from your work at least my understanding was that as i told you before that it operates as an umbrella um uh context accessibility norm normative umbrella that we can we can utilize and this is very very important but also the discourse how it feeds the the the culture of peace uh as you say these are very very uh important things and uh on that note um i would like really to thank you for your time for this discussion for introducing us to your to your work your ongoing work and uh hopefully very soon you know we will meet in person when we are allowed uh by by the pandemic and other constraints and we will have the opportunity you know to discuss further uh what do we mean about about peace because it is it is very obvious you know that it's concept is constantly evolving as you say you know in your own the title of this presentation so i would like to thank you very much i would like to thank all the participants you know who who attended who raised questions and uh i'm looking forward to seeing you soon and to seeing the rest of you uh during the next webinars we have Cecilia wants more thank you very very much thank you bye bye bye thank you very much thank you all