 We're a law firm in Tottenham, a small legal aid firm in Tottenham, and we represent those fighting for justice. We do immigration law, family law, civil liberties and human rights. Our values, excellence, justice, courage, a belief in justice for all were Kay's values, which she lived and breathed. Kay trained to be a lawyer at the city firm Lovells, where she met her partner Anand. She became a solicitor in 1999. She decided that a career in the city was not for her really, and she studied for her master's in human rights at SOAS. She joined the well-known civil liberties firm Christian Kahn and headed up their immigration department before she came and joined Wilson's in 2005, and we were so pleased to have her. She actually applied for a junior casework role and apologized for being overqualified, but she really wanted to come and join us and help our clients. She was extremely dedicated to her clients and she was a formidable lawyer. She was much loved by her colleagues and gave him her time willingly. She had high standards and she taught others how to work to those same standards, but always with a smile and the occasional wicked laugh. Her optimistic catchphrase, What Can Possibly Go Wrong, which seemed perfect for tonight, was often heard as her team worked on the most complex cases to the tightest deadlines, always in control, never flappable. In 2009 Kay was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was only 36. She was absolutely determined to continue her work as a lawyer and live life to the fullest, and she did. She was made a partner at Wilson's in 2012 and continued to build up a considerable reputation for her human rights work, described by Chambers as a champion in dealing with extremely vulnerable individuals. We thought that Kay had beaten the cancer, but it returned and she very sadly died in August 2016 at 43 years of age. We wanted to mark her life and her achievements in a way that she would have approved of and that reflected her passion for campaigning and her love for the law. In discussion with Anand and Kay's family, we decided that an annual lecture which captured that passion and love for the law would be something Kay would have liked and approved of. That is how the Kay Everett Memorial Lecture came about. This is the fourth annual lecture and we are very grateful to the School of Law at SOAS for partnering with us to organize them. I would also like to pay a special thank you this year to Michael Hanley, our senior partner who has been a driving force behind this project since Kay's death. Michael's retiring from the partnership or they're remaining as a consultant of the firm at the end of this month. Thank you, Michael. And now to the lecture. The first lecture in memory of Kay was delivered by Martha Spuria of the British Civil Liberties Organization, Liberty, a brilliant campaigning lawyer. The second by Lord Justice Rabinda Singh of the Court of Appeal, a brilliant constitutional lawyer and judge. The third by David Cole, a lawyer but also a brilliant leader of the American Civil Liberties Union. And Kay would be so pleased that Patricia Sellers, a brilliant international lawyer, is delivering today's lecture. What would Kay have done? She would have sat here and listened intently and then asked a most difficult question. Kay believed in the next generation of lawyers. So in addition to the annual lecture, we have also partnered with SOAS to give an award each year to a SOAS student in Kay's memory. And I'm very pleased to now hand over to Anita Vassish, who is the head of the immigration department of Wilson's to tell you a little more about that award and to announce this year's winner. Over to you, Anita. Thanks, Matthew. Thank you so much. So Kay was a truly excellent and a hugely loved friend and trainer and mentor to so many of our colleagues. And as Matthew just mentioned, as part of our honouring of Kay's memory, every year we award a prize to the highest marked human rights dissertation on a master's course of studies at SOAS. So this year's winning dissertation is entitled Staging Nationalism, Political Gendering in Indian Rape Trials. So this is a powerfully written and thoughtful work, which we're proud to publish on our website. And it is a highly recommended read. So now I'm so pleased not to announce the winner because everybody on this webinar has already announced the winner. But anyway, I'm so pleased to say again that the winner of this year's Kay Everett Memorial Prize is LLM graduate Shafali Karabanda. And of course, we can't hear everybody's applause, but I really hope that you'll join me in giving a thoroughly well deserved round of applause to Shafali. Yes, over to you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm inspired to hear about Kay's life and her passionate approach, and it's a real honour to receive it and to be here. Thank you so much for joining us, Shafali. And thank you Matthew and Anita for your introduction to this evening. I'm glad to see we're underway. And my role is to introduce our speaker this evening. So dear colleagues, friends and special guests from across the SOAS and legal and wider communities. It really is my pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker, Patricia Visua Salas, who will be delivering the Kay Everett Memorial Lecture. One of the most important events in our university calendar here at the School of Law. Professor Salas is an international criminal lawyer and currently holds the role of special advisor for gender for the office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, while also holding an appointment as visiting fellow at Kellogg College of University of Oxford, professor of practice at the London School of Economics and senior research fellow at the Human Rights Centre, University of California, Berkeley. Professor Salas has previously held the role of legal advisor for gender, acting head of the legal advisory section and a prosecutor at the ICTY or Yugoslav Tribunal from 1994 to 2007, and legal advisor for gender at the Rwandan Tribunal, the ICTR from 1995 to 1999. She developed legal strategies and was a member of the trial teams for the Akiyesu and Kunarak cases, as well as many other landmark decisions that remain the preeminent legal standards for the interpretation of sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, torture and enslavement. And in addition to all that, just in case you're not impressed enough yet, Professor Salas has lectured lectures extensively on IHL and ICL International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law, and has featured in the Discovery Channel series Why We Hate and in the acclaimed documentary film The Uncondemned. She also served as a story consultant on the PBS series Women, War and Peace, and as advisor on The Prosecutors, a documentary film by ArtWalk Productions. Finally, Patricia Salas is the recipient of the prestigious Prominent Women in International Law Award awarded by the American Society of International Law. She holds an honorary doctorate in law from the City University of New York, while being an honorary fellow for lifetime achievement from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has been awarded the National Bar Association's Ron Brown in International Lawyer Prize and the Global Center for Justice's inaugural Janet Ben Shoof Global Justice Award. I hope that you will agree with me that Professor Salas' work stands out as exemplary, making her a fitting speaker for tonight's event and for our celebration of the passion and commitment of our former student, your former colleague Kay Everett. Please join me in welcoming Professor Patricia Visu Salas tonight. And I know we can't hear your applause, but I'm sure it's felt. Patty, over to you. Hello, thank you. Finally, I believe that I'm unmuted. This has been a day of going through the vortex, but I'd like to celebrate Kay's memory, but also her living memorial that I can sense with her colleagues or partners, obviously former students and friends. And it's very much of an honor. Well, let me dive into my speech. And to do that, I will be actually reading from a text that I prepared among the things that didn't quite work well today was printing out a speech. So please forgive me if you see my eyes going from right to left and right to left. And also, I think underneath my name, I don't know whether I'm still Gina or my back to be in Patty, but let me assure you I am definitely here physically and in spirit. So let's get started. As a matter of fact, I was very, very pleased to be with you because I consider that this lecture is really among the human rights family. And I'll include international criminal lawyers and international humanitarian lawyers in our family gathering. I'm assuming that you've signed into the zoomed lecture because you wanted to have a family discussion. And I think as a matter of fact, it's it's about time that we did speak because there are several issues among us that at times we've been a little bit too glib about. I think at times we refuse to talk about our internal shortcomings. So during this lecture, I would just ask that you be a little contemplative as this year has forced us to be to be a little still and at times to be by yourself. But to understand that we are together as family as a collectivity. Many of us share an uncanny love of the law. I know that we're not supposed to speak of the law neither as a feminine mistress nor as a task maker. But I want to say that we're tethered, we're tethered to working with the law, especially law as a tool of liberation or progressive realization of human rights, including what I would argue for a human right to peace. But we must admit that at times we have been very contentious in our relationship with the tools of law. And of course, we understand that you can't tear down the master's house or rebuild your own house with the master's tools. At the same time, while that might maintain some truth, I think also that it could be a bit glib. And I want to explain why. I think that part of our work is retooling, is re-smelting the iron, is rebuilding the house. Even though we're living in houses that are the master's and were built by former slaves, it is our duty to look at each board and in particularly the foundational blocks. I'd like to offer you a current analogy in international criminal law that is more than just a mere gesture toward questioning some of our foundational blocks. In international criminal law, crimes against humanity stands as a type of venerable signposts of the protection that supported the civilian population against enumerated harms that consist together of a widespread or systematic attack. The individual perpetrators might consist of state authorities or non-state actors. But the intention, the objective of crimes against humanity is to protect the civilian population. Crimes against humanity shifted what was the war crimes paradigm when a violation could only be inflicted against broadly speaking the enemy civilians, not people of your own country or against prisoners of war. However, civilians are a collective designation intended to cover both national and non-national populations simultaneously under crimes against humanity. So crimes against humanity actually refocused and reframed any notion of national allegiance as being the reason that one gets protection. Its doctrinal spine was really the response to a simple inquiry. We need to know are you a member of a civilian population that was under attack? That is the civilian population writ large, unburdened by proof of what is your sex? What is your race? What is your gender identity? What is your sexual orientation? What is your caste? What is your religion? That is not the question. The question is merely are you a member of the civilian population? Historically, the crime of crime against humanity is rooted in the atrocities of World War II, that Germany committed against civilian populations such as the population of Poland, France, where I am today in Belgium, and against the German population of the Roma, mixed race Germans, Jews, political dissenters, and gay men. However, when first drafted, the provisions enumerated, and particularly under persecution as an act of crime against humanity, listed only three groups of civilians, racial, religious, and political. It denied or disappeared the other subgroups, such as the disabled or gay men, or today what we would designate as members of the LGBTQI community. A legal political decision was made in the constructing of the original house of crimes against humanity. A decision was made as to which subgroup of the civilian population could qualify for specific protection against persecution. Crimes against humanity as founded in the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, we have to remember predates universal declaration of human rights, only by five years or so. Well, Patty, you must be saying by now, what does this have to do with me? Why are we here? Please, could you please, could you just clarify a bit? I'm a very progressive person in human rights, and I have advocacy as one of my front responsibilities every day. We in our family for decades have always never questioned why persecution should not be full and physically present in crimes against humanity. As a matter of fact, we're happy that persecution is part of international customary law, and we feel that it actually avenges, redresses many rights. But at the same time, family, we have to be honest, we never really interrogated what civilians were included, and most importantly, what civilians were excluded, exempt from protection, from persecution, until the drafting of the Rome Statute of the International Court. The persecution provision of the Rome Statute under Article 7 recognizes now that persecution can be committed against any identifiable group or collectivity, such as political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or on any grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law. Furthermore, it's noted in the paragraph that explains persecution a bit more fully, that persecution outlaws the deprivation of a fundamental right being inflicted upon members of a group. The explanatory paragraph states, persecution means the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity. In shorthand, when you're persecuted, you are deprived of your fundamental rights. As international law practitioners and human rights advocates, there might be cause for celebration at this expanded view of the groups in persecution, because persecution now includes many more universally recognized groups, ethnic, cultural, religious, and persecution now expressly refers to the safeguarding of international or fundamental rights. We would say that they must be fundamental human rights under international law, so therefore didn't we win? Well, I would suggest that we take a contemplative breath of humility. Has our lawdatory response to the enlargement of the identifiable groups under primes against humanity made us into almost exuding a knee-jerk appreciation of progress toward maybe one day that the identity of other groups and other collectivities might be included expressly by name, such as whom, such as the poor, indigenous populations, the disabled, children, cast, the elderly, maybe specifically naming LGBTIQ communities. Do you see how we like to splinter and identify? Do we utilize polish and then sharpen out our little pristine human rights tools to proclaim that, oh, another intersectional analysis is really assisting crimes against humanity with persecution? Well, maybe we'll be safeguarding elderly females from persecution if they are recognized as also belonging to a cultural, religious, or gender configuration. We could go on indefinitely. Furthermore, since persecution as a provision under crimes against humanity protects us from a deprivation of human rights, we might then kind of try to circumvent any thorny issues of did we name all the groups? Did we really clarify the group identity and just concentrate on articulating the fundamental rights against which this accepted group can be protected? For example, rather than attempt to twist cast into culture or religion, let's concentrate on saying that all persons who belong to a religious group or a cultural group have a fundamental right to be recognized as belonging to a cast or said in the reverse have a fundamental right not to be persecuted because they do belong to a cast. So all persons who belong to national groups have fundamental rights, for example, to a gender identity. We don't have to name genders a group, we'll just name it as the fundamental human right or the right to sexual orientation. Or family, do we sit down? Or do we stand up and then take a great step backwards from our frenzied reconstruction of the house and realize whether sincerely intended or incompletely realized, there remains a foundational cornerstone that needs to be realigned with crimes against humanity. If the doctrinal criteria is that the civilian population must be safeguarded against attacks, then it is the civilian population that must not be persecuted irrespective of its configuration. The foundational enumeration of crimes against humanity actually denied protection from persecution to the subgroup of populations, the sterilized and euthanized and physically and mentally disabled children of Germany and German adults who were mentally or physically disabled. It denied it to the incarcerated gay men who were placed in concentration camps. These subgroups of the civilian population endured attacks propelled by Nazi Germany. In essence, they were attacked because they offered nothing to the reproductive or gender ideologies of Nazi Germany. So therefore, this unenumerated, this silent, this absent foundational stone was then carved into customary law. So much so that we thought until the Rome Statute that persecution could only apply to a political, a racial or a religious group. Today that stone need not be pulverized, but it requires a bold transformative realignment. I would propose that it suffices to be a member of the civilian population to receive protection from persecution under crimes against humanity. This circling back to the doctrinal spine of crimes against humanity, the civilian population actually strengthens the edifice, actually strengthens the meaning and the intent of crimes against humanity. So let us query who can or should be persecuted? Who can or should be denied fundamental rights? Do they have to be groups? Can they be individuals? Journalists are persecuted. Human rights defenders are persecuted. Indigenous and Aboriginal populations are persecuted. Bonded laborers, children are sold into slavery. Transpersons of colors are persecuted. Let us recognize their commonality. They are members of a civilian population, period. This comprises the humanity in crimes against humanity. This comprises the humanity that must be given shelter under the eaves and roofs of the houses that we construct as human rights advocates as international criminal lawyers. This is protection that we should offer in terms of persecution. I admit it might not sound glorious or sexy to identify yourself or other members as merely the civilian population. Human rights advocates can almost be too enamored of using all of our intersectional tools on ourselves and on victims and survivors in terms of their collective identities. And then we await that we've so clearly denominated them that they become worthy of international recognition and then international protection. At times, I think it is an overuse or misuse of our analytical tools when they're not needed. I'm not saying that this is a blind spot or even just a repost against fragmentation of international law. Rather, it is a call for acknowledgement that in some instances our unified legal identity is safeguarded under maybe very unsexy nomenclature. Repositioning the foundational stone of crimes against humanity, sanding down its customary law restrictions, polishing its granite veins to reveal this common identity as civilians that must be spared from persecution, spared from the denial of fundamental rights. Seems plain and seems simple. It is foundational. It is our new foundational perception of humanity. So what can we do about it? Well, the General Assembly now is currently in the process of drafting the first international treaty that is solely dedicated to crimes against humanity. An opportunity exists. An opportunity exists to advocate for humanity, for us, as a civilian population. We could proclaim that no division will be tolerated. Well, I hope now that we've settled into our family gathering that we don't fear asking other questions about ourselves. I'm not willing to take this out into the public domain and talk to people who might not be as clearly in quotes on the side of making sure that human rights and international criminal law grow in a manner that's reflective and expand in a manner that's reflective. I will leave you with one other issue, a protection. It was an expansion of protection that basically went under the radar screen. It was protection of girls from rape and sexual slavery during armed conflict. In 2019, the International Criminal Court handed down the judgment of the prosecutor versus Integanda. Integanda concerned the use of child soldiers and an ongoing armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The armed conflict was deemed non-international or civil war, and the charges against Integanda included the conscription of child soldiers, both boys and girls. However, what was exceptional and what became precedent in the Integanda case is that Mr. Integanda was charged for rapes and sexual slavery committed by members of his own militia against his own girl child soldiers. Now, this might seem not so de novo. Well, you'd say patty, of course, that sounds like a crime to me. However, you have to understand that technically at the heart of numerous defenses to this charge, the question was whether under the Rome statue you could have same side war crimes of sexual violence in civil wars, non-international armed conflicts. Were the girl children really protected from the sexual violence? Because under the normal war crimes paradigm, you were only protected if you were outside of combat or the combat during an internal or civil war. So the question was even raised quite sincerely by the defense of whether the girls, while they were being raped and sexually enslaved, were they out of combat? Could jurisdiction be established for these war crimes? But an Integanda the prosecutor did not assert that the girl children had been placed out of combat, had put down their arms in order and while they were being raped. Technically, they remained in combat. And yet under the Rome statue, they remain protected. The prosecutor diligently and consistently argued that the construction of the Rome statue, in particularly under Article 8 and established under the framework of international law, offered protection from same side perpetrators. The first trial chamber agreed and it said that while most expressed prohibitions of rape and sexual slavery under international humanitarian law protect civilians who are out of combat, it said that it did not consider those explicit protections to exhaustively define or indeed limit the scope of protection. And the second appeals chamber also agreed. It said that the framework of international law while examining in particularly the Geneva Conventions failed to surmise any general rule in international humanitarian law that stipulates that intra-party same side victims were excluded from its protection. In other words, the appeal chamber found no conceivable reason to justify the rapes and sexual slavery of girl children, irrespective of the circumstances. Since there was no customary rule that said it couldn't be done or it had to be done, the general framework of international law protected them. The decision, seemingly or I would assert, realigns the paradigm of war crimes in terms of who was protected. Yes, girl child soldiers are protected from their own militia. It's stunning or maybe it's just common sense that such heinous acts should be protected under international law. We do hold slavery up to use cohesion value. It should be prohibited at all times in all circumstances. So how did this gap? How was it previously permissible or even tenable? How could we let jurisdiction be an issue of whether and when we apply safeguards against sexual slavery. The second appeals chamber also pronounced for the very first time to my knowledge that rape in this situation of non-international armed conflict had used cohesion status. It's a question I had asked over a decade ago. Basically, when is it legal to rape in times of emergency or in times of international armed conflict? Or only when the person is still in combat? All of these questions are ridiculous. They're absolutely absurd for human rights advocates. Yes, the premise and the shifted paradigm seems dangerous, dangerous if not ridiculous, especially in the face of humanitarian law rules that per se protect child soldiers from being recruited or conscripted and that protect all children from any form of indecent assault, even when captured. So how could the status of the girl child soldier be placed aside so that we can inflict use cohesion slavery and rape prohibitions on her? So hence the customary law foundation of war crimes and particularly during internal armed conflict was not so suffocating that the Rome statue couldn't find a means to let in the air. Child soldiers ostensibly belong to a collectivity. Children and all children are owed special protection. How common of a denomination, just like civilians, how very common just to say the child belongs to the group of children, a protective denomination for which slavery cannot be allowed. I will end my family meeting here, but let me warn you, if we had stayed longer, I would have brought up many more items, not just about who refuses to do the dishes, make their beds, never cooks, but also about the way that we are still immature in understanding slavery and children, in particularly in the last ongoing judgment of the international criminal court. Children who could be enslaved under crimes against humanity found no birth or slavery under the war crimes provision due to a structural deficit in the Rome statute. Well, I probably held you so long and during our COVID-19 period, we do get restless and we're allowed to have at least an hour of air. We can pretend we have a dog to walk, but I would just ask you, continue to talk within your human rights family. We have a couple of shortcomings that we can clarify and protect, perhaps correct. We have tools that we need to take out, understand when to use them, foundation stones to move, architectural structures to repurpose. It was fitting that this year Pritzker's Prize, the annual architectural prize was given to a couple that did not demolish, but that over the course of 40 years kept repurposing old houses that lost their use and found new use. We cannot throw human rights or international criminal law away, but we cannot let it be unresponsive to the needs of humanity. Thank you very much. Thank you, Patricia. That was fantastic. I've got lots of questions flying around my head, but I'll just welcome anyone else that has a question to pop it in the Q&A box and I will read them out. I might invite the panel if they'd like to ask you any questions. Certainly, it reminded me of when I heard you talk before and probably don't remember, it was some time ago in Belfast by a member sitting and thinking that there's something that you do with the law that both takes what is and looks into the future and repurposes it and allows us to reimagine it. So often, I think when we're teaching international law, human rights law, our students' experience of existential human rights is like what's it good for, it's never going to move, it's never going to change and this is just such a wonderful reminder of what we do as lawyers. I think the first question in the chat also alerts us to some of the synergies of the work that we know our colleagues that are working in the UK through Wilson's and other firms perhaps felt with your paper as well. I'm just going to invite the panel first of all if there are any kind of any questions that people wanted to pick up and start with. Otherwise, I'll take the one in the chat and as I said, anyone in the audience who would like to ask a question, please do pop it in the Q&A box. I don't know if I've got any panelists that wanted to jump in. Right. Well, let's start with Natasha's. Thank you, Natasha, for your question. Natasha writes, I cannot agree more with the call for acknowledgement that no civilian should be left out of the definition of persecution that rises to the level of crimes against humanity. When I think of the basis for petitioning for asylum, query whether a similar critique is appropriate regarding leaving some categories of persecuted persons unprotected and the example given is survivors of domestic violence. What are your thoughts? And I guess perhaps the new treaty maybe plays into that as well. Right. Thank you very much for the question because it brings up a very interesting issue that we often overlook among our human rights family is that when I'm talking about persecution as a provision or an act of crimes against humanity, I have to realize that there's persecution as a criteria on whether you're going to be granted asylum or not. And at times, those two concepts seem to rub against each other without really locking in place, you know, like a good space capsule. But what is quite noticeable is that what we will fail to declare as persecution under refugee law mutates because certain countries will recognize that asylum can be granted based on certain criteria and not on other criteria. But that criteria shouldn't mutate in terms of fundamental human rights for persecution under crimes against humanity. So I would state that as we understand, for example, that violence against women is not epidemic pandemic. It's at the persecutory level that women almost do not believe that they have a right to be physically free from violence, psychologically free from violence, irrespective of whether they're in armed conflict or out of armed conflict. I think the UK has been going through two weeks of quite a hair raising discussion caused by the murder, but actually caused by the series of inflections against women. One could look at the practice of domestic violence, which we should call assault and battery that occurs in home as being so prolific that you really wonder when has it slipped into an attack against the civilian population that happens to be female and denies them their fundamental rights every day in terms of existence. So I thank you for the observation and for us to re acknowledge that we have to understand the continuum of persecution, but it's different apparitions depending on the legal regimes. Great, thanks Patricia. Yeah, that's a really powerful answer to think about. Do you think this is from an anonymous attendee? Do you think human rights organizations like Amnesty International play an important role or any role in shaping human rights law? Well, I would like to think that and I absolutely do because I think advocacy that goes to the limits at times of understanding and informing constituencies what are human rights, but also serve as notice to different states and regimes and even entities is a vital part of the human rights law. Every entity has its drawbacks and has its superb points of view. I remember when Amnesty was limited to only prisoners of consciousness and then to expand into gender seemed to have been a tremendous step and a difficult step. I think that Amnesty has grown with us and continues to grow, but I would also look to local human rights organization and organizations that don't necessarily use that moniker of human rights, but are basically fighting for economic and social justice, racial justice, but without the vocabulary of the international human rights regimes. Thank you. I mean, thinking about all the gender justice work that's gone on at the tribunals and the court, you know, has always had kind of a lot of NGO work shaping and alongside those actors in the courts. So I'm going to call in Matthew Davies, who's on the panel, I think has a question for you. Yes. Thank you, Patty. That was a great lecture. And I was thinking, as you were talking about how you bring about change in the world, how you actually change international humanitarian law, you know, through politics, through policy development, through academia, or through case law itself. And it made me think, you know, we're lawyers, I'm a lawyer, you're an academic, you're also a lawyer. There are other people who are politicians who campaign. I'm just wondering for the young students in the audience, perhaps, and I'm thinking of the case workers at my firm, what would your kind of advice be to a young person starting out in their career in terms of what's the best direction to go in to try and bring about change to international human rights law? Is it being a practicing lawyer, an academic, or a political campaign? And what would you say about that? Well, I would say that's a trick question. Either way, I'm going to have to try and split myself up. But I think that the absolute first thing that one has to do is find an area of the law that you want to be in, that you want to express yourself in. And that might be criminal law for one person that could be trade law for another person, one area of human rights law, refugee law for someone else. So find an area of the law that you want to engage in for a long time and in depth. And you want to question your engagement in that law and that law itself, first of all, you'll find that your work hours might be long, but they'll go by very quickly. And you'll have your partners or your children ask you, are you still writing that brief? Are you still writing that article? So that was the first thing. You're allowed to enjoy what you do. Law should not be a punishment as a field. The other thing is that I have been very fortunate to have practiced law both in the United States as a public defender at international courts and tribunals to teach the law, to work as a human rights project manager, and to do different types of advising investigations. One of the things that I'm finding is that people are gifted at different things. There are some absolutely stunning professors who can spark an idea that you will not have if you work with a lawyer who's fairly mediocre, can get the work done. If you can be that professor, be that professor or learn to. And the same way in the other aspects, there is not one part of the field that does all of the heavy lifting, impossible. But it is that synergy that every now and then comes together, that wonderful expert witness who's been honing away, that will look like an obscure part of human rights, that testifies before a court. And a judge who wakes up to listen to that testimony, although they have to run back and write a judgment, and all of the civil society organizations who have made sure that the witness shows up and is there, all of that can come together. And I'm also very touched by the way that art can step in and show us a human rights issue, a human rights solution, a human rights progression that we can't get sometimes in other fields. It might be by music, it might be by movies, it might be by poetry. And so I would not suggest that there is one way, but there is your way. And that would probably be the very best way for yourself. I'm speaking to your young lawyers or your students now. Thank you. Yeah, so my students have an assignment that involves them bringing in a piece of art. So I feel validated for setting that assignment. And it does, I think it does allow us to speak about differently. Of course, it's a big, yeah, and it's a big, it's a very important issue in higher education in the UK and elsewhere at this moment about the role of the humanities. So I think as perhaps as lawyers, we have an obligation to kind of speak out, you know, about where the emphasis is turning in higher education in particular. Gina, could I jump in? Because I think the role of humanities are among the best colleagues that lawyers could have. And some of my recent academic work and also my legal advising to civil society organizations, it's been because of the current kind of generation of sociologists, historians, who I read on the areas of law that I'm interested in, such as enslavement, that have really shown a light to me and have really, I would almost say repositioned some of the cliches that we've all been socialized with too. So I think that the broader our basis of understanding the societies in which we live and attempt to change, the better lawyers will be. Yeah, thanks. Great, we've got a few more questions. So the next question is from Laura. Thanks Laura. How do you, to Patricia, how do you answer those scholars who criticize the expansive jurisprudence of the ICC regarding the policy element in the crime of against humanity? Do you see a problem in a crime against humanity and just in inverted commas without contours? Do you want to? Yes, I know that there is criticism of saying it's expansive, okay? And it's expansive compared to the customary international law that was litigated at the Rwanda Tribunals, Yugoslav Tribunals, and it's the notion. But on the other hand, I do not think it is expansive in the sense that it violates the doctrine of crimes against humanity or in any way the defendant's right to a fair trial. My concern is not an expansion in terms of policy, because I think that the Rome statute itself, I've said it before, is a very state-centric statute. I think that during the conference in Rome, there was a lot of energy and enthusiasm and aspiration that went into making the Rome statute. But I also think that it was balanced and sometimes torn the other way by the interest of states, because I think as the diplomats started to negotiate the treaty, realize that this treaty is talking about us as politicians, as military hierarchy, as the potentially most responsible. And so I think that that's why this tension comes in, that we even say, oh, the policy element is being expanded. No, I think it might have been almost unnaturally reduced during the negotiation. Great, thanks. And the follow-up question is from Gemma about victimhood. Protecting individuals, human rights can often exacerbate their victimhood. Do you have any thoughts on how to empower them through the legal process? Well, I think the legal process has to be understood as just part of a survivor's life. I mean, we make the distinction, a survivor is those who continue to live and unfortunately, a victim is, we refer to that often as a deceased person. The legal process is only one part of a survivor's life. While you're engaged with that survivor, that survivor might be very attentive to you, might concede power to you. But to think of a survivor is not having any power or having a power that will stay stagnant and only remain at one level for the rest of the life is really the incompetence of any legal person to tell you the truth. I think that kind of the standard answer is you want to make the survivor feel secure, you want to make sure that you're being survivor-centered, you want to make sure, well, I think that is only partially the answer. I think we have to really go deeper into our humanity and we have all been victimized at certain small levels at certain times. To be very bold, I will say that we are all a type of victim this year in terms of COVID, whether it's our slightly reduced circumstances, whether it's the loss of family and friends, but I don't think any of us think that this is a permanent disempowerment and that every day we have someone that must give us power is if it is theirs to give power. So I think that we really have to look at our own humanity in relationship to all of our clients, all of our witnesses, and maybe to step back from this, the witnesses per se weak disempowered, I am per se gifted and powerful, so the exchange can only go one way. Thank you. So I'm going to call Scott in, who I think, sorry, Scott, I'm not sure how long you've had your hand up. No, not too long. I was wondering whether I should do the generous host thing and sit back, but if Patricia will pardon me, I will intervene, because I wanted to take things in a slightly different direction. And I'll ask you a question that's not restricted to international criminal law, but links human rights and international humanitarian law as well as the parallel histories of right struggles and recognition protection on the national plane, because there seems to be a kind of a common thread here of serial extension or incorporation of recognition. So there's a history of violations and victimization, which only gets uncovered and revealed over time as that history gets derepressed, and these experiences and identities are brought forward and announced themselves and make claims on the basis of their victimization. So the extension of a full complement of attributes and rights and capacities gets gradually extended to people who only bore them partially, like women, children, non-whites, non-binary people, etc. And what strikes me here, and what I wanted to raise is something we might want to think about is the significance of the sequence or the series. So it's no historical accident that women's rights precede civil rights, precede gay rights, precede trans rights, etc. So the older the recognition, the more presumptively legitimate and the closer to some presumptive natural baseline. So the newer categories of discrimination or phobia or victimization or persecution are perceived as somehow flimsier and less stable and more suspect and more subject to scrutiny or contestation. So I'm thinking of things here like turfism. So what sense then do we make of this series, of this sequence, and that latter-day histories of victimization, once they get identified and uncovered and addressed, still seem to run the risk of being challenged and contested? Right. Thank you for that question, but for that observation. And I think that it's tied into that all of a sudden, in the past 10, 12 years, we've had a convention on disabilities. But we certainly know that under the Nazi regime, disabilities were a driving force in terms of persecution. So should we really be looking at disabilities as we as human rights advocates have elevated it to a treaty status? Or can we understand that it was revealed before it has always been a part of our societies? As a matter of fact, it's slightly modified, depending on the society's public health or ability to give health care. So it looks like it's a new disability, a new identity, but in essence, it's an old prejudice. The same way with, as I've tried to underline, gay men within the Nazi gender ideology would be contrary to how they envisioned the gender constructs of the society that they were moving toward, which should have been blonde blue-eyed, completely straight women who would bear four to five blonde blue-eyed children. So we are artificially almost giving places to identities of humanity according to a chronology that is haphazardly revealed, often officially suppressed. But that doesn't mean that it is necessarily weaker identity. It might be in relationship to the political opposition that it's weaker or stronger. And I think that those are false issues that we're into. And that's why at times I think we need to grasp our collective identities as being powerful of not only meriting rights, but being the embodiment of the rights that we need to have for all. And I do want to say one thing related to that, is that because we're in this type of chronological construct of different movements coming after other movements, we often forget, for example, the American civil rights movement, which is supposedly kind of placed in the 60s. Well, that was just its apparition in the 60s. Well, certainly there was what could have been called the anti-segregation, anti-apartheid American movements from the 1920s on up to the 1950s or from the 1865. So those struggles. So our definition of when they have their crowning or defining moments. Also, I believe it's very distorted. I think struggles are very layered and they are long term. Thank you. So I'm going to tie two questions together that have come up in the Q&A. The first from Melissa, how has your public defender experience in the US influenced your experience practicing international criminal law? And a follow up question, how do you think government lawyers can play in this human rights family? So I think it's sort of both or around both your personal experience, but also the interplay between the domestic and international legal spaces. Right. Well, being a public defender is a time period in my life that I absolutely relish. It didn't last as long as I necessarily wanted it to. I've been moved to South America for several years. But it gave me that day to day, very close client contact. And as you know, most defenders can do up to four or five trials a day. I mean, they're not necessarily long jury trials in the beginning. But also what it taught me is that I really, I really enjoyed criminal law. I really enjoyed elements of crimes, what was been for I enjoyed understanding defenses and standing up before a judge and learning how to be quick on my feet. I would not say the majority. I would say 99% of all my clients in Philadelphia were black or Puerto Rican. And maybe 1% were poor whites who didn't have private lawyers or really got caught hanging out with their black or Puerto Rican friends. And it set me off for a wonderful understanding of the intersection really of race, economics, and criminality within the US criminal justice system. I see prosecuting international crimes similar, but in some ways very different, the methodology of criminal trials and understanding that. But I certainly don't feel the connection to the accused that I might have felt to my own client in Philadelphia. In terms of government lawyers, I think government lawyers are often underestimated in terms of their contribution to human rights. Many of the government lawyers basically take into the government house and then write up the policies that were the ones that the human rights advocates were clamoring for in their briefs on the streets. I'm not saying that that happens with every administration. I won't say it happens all the time, but I've had several interns who worked for me who have gone into government work and have worked in the human rights divisions of the US Justice Department or who themselves have become absolutely superb policymakers in terms of women's rights, in terms of the rights of migrant workers. So I see that as a wing or an area of the specializations that we're all interested in. Thank you. I think we see similar things with our students as well. So Valentina asks, what do you think is going to improve access to justice, especially in human rights law? What can one do as a lawyer to advance access to justice? And she adds, I personally think it is also the responsibility of the lawyers, of lawyers to reach out to marginalised groups and educate. How far does interdisciplinary work happen in the profession of a human rights lawyer? Well, I think in terms of what can we do to open up access to justice, if we're talking about the UN treaty body system, we know that it seems to move with the pace of a very laden, slow slug, not even a fast snail. But I think that we realise that there are political policies tugging and pulling it. It seems to me quite absurd that we have treaty bodies that can only meet up to six or eight weeks a year, as opposed to throughout the year, that we have experts that are assigned to them that in essence are volunteers. They get their room and board paid while they're working at this part-time job that's so terribly important. We all know that there would be ways of making access to the system better and for the system itself to be much more performant to function better. And I think in terms of our national laws, I guess one day I would love to see that law book that the second or third year students get and it's a criminal law book and there are about three chapters on international crimes, that let you know that you can try your crimes against humanity in London, that you make sure that you can take your case of torture to court where you are. I don't know why we still have this notion that international criminal law is so far beyond the understanding of anyone who's just studying criminal law. It's the same field in different venues. And I think that we should start taking advantage of that and using not only our national courts but our regional human rights courts, why can't they have criminal international criminal jurisdiction and the international courts and hybrid courts. So that's a little bit of the world that I would see to give us more access. And do you think, sorry, Chair's privilege, do you think that the new treaty, the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty has a place in that process of moving towards that? Well, I think that nothing is one unless something is raised and then persistence applied. There have been some very good lawyers, Leila Sedat is one, Charles Jalo, who had been really pushing for the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty. And I think that the original thought was let's make the treaty look as much like the Rome Statute so that the countries that didn't buy into the Rome Statute at least can buy into the Crimes Against Humanity part of it. And there have been other discussions among international criminal lawyers that say that's absolutely fine and good, but why do we want to preserve when we see room for change and room for progressive change? So I think that the Sixth Committee, the General Assembly, gives us a new opportunity and I really would urge the law students and people engaged in this field to understand that drafting the law is half of winning the case. Every big law firm knows that, okay? So just apply your skills in that thing too. Great, thank you. I think we claim Leila as one of our alumni as well. Wonderful. So Raj says, do you view the current COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity for the world to take a contemplative breath in terms of human rights? And this is from Raj, who's at the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Center. Oh yes, I know my dear Raj, okay, a former student. Raj, yes I do. And I know Raj does yoga, so she's probably doing a handstand while she's listening to this. But we have to take a breath. That doesn't mean we have to completely break down and stop walking, although many of us have been hit by things that do allow us to have moments of respite that are necessary for resilience. But one of the things I think that we should absolutely do is take advantage of this time period where the world is in flux, is to listen differently, to find out what areas are we engaged in that could benefit from listening to other areas of work, other ideas, how we can really take on health as a human right, but in addition to that, public health as a collective human right that we enunciate better. How do we have a world in which we understand that domestic violence didn't pop up with COVID, exacerbated with COVID, but obviously has just been permeating throughout our societies. Why can't we take a chance to understand that if we can have the logistics to be in wars for 10 and 15 years, and not the logistics to get vaccinations to the world within a year, that our priorities, whether they're economic, social, or political, are incorrect? And it's not a question of being sustainable. It's a question not for the long term, but even for this week, for next week, they're incorrect. Thank you. So, Shaxi asks in in a reckoning and rewriting of international law, how does the increasingly narrow increasing narrowing of civics space across ICC members and the encroaching on the work of the ICC bode for the future of this? The human rights project to protect ultimately people from individual breaches and agarious breaches such as ICL and IHL. So, there's just a follow up mention of the recent sanctions against individual staff members at the ICC made by the US. Is she talking to me personally? No, I'm just kidding. Well, that's what you call a chilling effect, right? But that's one of the oldest, that's the oldest play in the book, right? To try and attack the the foot soldiers, the advisors, you then you sanction the leader Fatou has lived under quite a bit of strain because it's applied to herself and to her family, and to Americans who work at the court or work with her directly. It was certainly a regressive tactic, one that I hope that the Biden government not only will not employ in the future, but will quickly withdraw right now. But nonetheless, there have been very brave attorneys, the former special advisor for children entered into a lawsuit with other people to say that her human rights, her ability to articulate her views and to work with civil society, but also the court have been breached. So this closing space is something that we have to be very attentive to. We have to remember that not many of the most populous nations in the world signed the Rome Statute. But many of the powerful populist nations that did not sign the Rome Statute must feel that it's a threat or else they wouldn't even pay this much attention to it. Yeah, that's such an important point. Then there are always at the meetings of the state parties despite not being a state party and influence, often with the biggest contingent. So I think that that's so interesting, right? So we're coming towards the end. I have a question that's actually in the chat from my colleague Michelle Staggs-Kelsel, which I read you. She says, thank you for stunning lecture and for the wonderful depth and breadth of your musings, as always, with regard to the issue of fragmentation and humanity. And this might be a nice one for us to end on. But although some of us as scholars are looking at ways in which we can address the deep fissures in international law and the schisms that relate to viewing it as fragmented, in your view, might a good place to start be to think through humanity as a starting point for stitching international law back together. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this particular strand of your talk to share with us. Well, thank you. Yes, I do think humanity is one of our fundamental bases that we seem to run away from. And that's in particular, of course, why I chose crimes against humanity. That is us. The world has been divided, can continually self subdivide. And at times, it might be to examine something more closely. I think that's absolutely fine. But when it is to splinter for the sake of just announcing difference without any resolution of the larger means and ways in which we are attacked and connected, then I think that there is a type of futility to it. And if I could make a very inaccurate analogy, it's like a country that is a new country, that is broken away from being colonized. Thank goodness. So we have our kind of rights of self determination. And then it goes through a phase of nationalism, and it gets stuck. It goes through the phase of I am XYZ and it never becomes the country that fully is a member of the international community, that understands the I and me as long as the we and the us. And when the fragmentation of international law and particularly international law that deals with groups and entities becomes fragmented and stuck in its equivalent of nationalism, as opposed to rejoining back to its humanity stronger and better, I think it does weaken international law and weakens our community of ourselves. Thank you. That seems like a really nice thought to end on, or maybe I don't know if you want to add anything on that. And thank you, Patricia, so much for the stimulating book. I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Professor Mountain Lau, who's going to close for us. Yeah, thank you very much, team. I think I'm unmuted. So before I actually thank our speaker, I'd like to thank our partner in this collaboration, Wilson solicitors, where K, of course, was a student that saw us and also a partner at that law firm, and really your support is much appreciated. And we are really proud that despite really very difficult circumstances. And as Patricia Professor Seller said, you know, our joint in some ways kind of victimhood of COVID, you know, we've still managed to actually keep up the good work and actually have a extremely memorable K. Everton Memorial Lecture. So my first thanks go to to colleagues at Wilson Solicitors. My other things goes, of course, to to colleagues at at source and the community who worked hard to make this talk possible. My third set of thanks, and in particular, have to say our administrative colleagues in the law school office, Juliet and Fatima have been wonderful. And yes, big thank you to that team, actually, who've done marvelous work. And my thanks to all the attendees who've been extremely patient. And I've kind of been sending out kind of links and so on. And so this kind of thing comes with an apology for these technical glitches. I'm very sorry about that. And that apology also goes in particular to our main speaker, Professor Patricia Wieser-Seller is really very sorry that you had so many difficulties getting into this. But all of the people I've just joined are now joining me in thanking you for a wonderfully powerful and inspirational lecture, which is going to have a big impact on the work of Wilson Solicitors of the human rights defenders community and the community of scholars and students at source. So thank you very much and goodbye to everyone.