On April 10

On this day in ...
... 1981 (30 years ago today), an inmate on hunger strike in a Belfast prison was elected to the British Parliament. Fifty-two percent of the electorate in the region of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Northern Ireland, voted for Bobby Sands, who ran as a candidate of the "Anti-H Block" campaign, a term that referred to the section of the Maze prison in "reserved for republicans and loyalists convicted of terrorist offences." (credit for photo of campaigners putting up pro-Sands poster) As stated by the BBC:

In spite of attempts by the European Commission on Human Rights to mediate, Bobby Sands died on 5 May 1981.
He was the first of 10 republican prisoners to die after hunger strikes.
They attracted international media attention and sympathy for the republicans.
The hunger strikes came to an end in October 1981.
However, the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher granted the republicans only a few minor concessions.

(Prior April 10 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On April 9

On this day in ...
... 1949, the International Court of Justice decided its 1st case. Its judgment on the merits in Corfu Channel (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v. Albania) held by a vote of 11 to 5 that Albania was responsible for destruction and loss of life stemming from the 1946 incidents in which British destroyers hit mines while traveling in Albanian waters. (map credit) By a vote of 14 to 2, the ICJ further declared that Britain's entry had not violated Albanian sovereignty. The ICJ ruled unanimously that its finding of responsibility constituted satisfaction, and so declined to award damages.

(Prior April 9 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On April 5

On this day in ...
... 1986 (25 years ago today), a bomb exploded in a Berlin discotheque popular with American servicemembers and filled at the time with nearly 500 women and men. Killed as a result of the bombing of the club called La Belle were 2 U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. More than 200 persons, among them many Americans, were injured. (credit for photo of plaque commemorating tragedy) The bombing touched off tit-for-tat retaliations: an April 1986 U.S. bombing in Libya that claimed the life of the daughter of Libya's leader, Moammar Gadhafi, followed by the 1988 explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland, of a jet carrying many U.S. and British passengers. The incidents have garnered new scrutiny recently on account of Security Council-authorized action against Libya.

(Prior April 5 posts are here, here, and here, and here.)

Older people with LGBT Identities

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post, and to Professor Nancy Knauer for suggesting me)

Older people with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities face unique challenges as they age. They are at greater risk of needing formal care provision in older age, due to fewer having children, and more having fragmented relationships with birth family associated with their sexual and gender identification. Yet at the same time, there are shared concerns in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia, that health and social care providers are failing to address the needs of older people with LGBT identities and that this, in turn, is causing people to avoid services even when they may desperately needs them. Professor Nancy J. Knauer of Temple Law School (pictured right) , has written an award winning paper about the problems of LGBT older people in the USA [LGBT Elder Law: Toward Equity in Aging, 32 Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 1 (2009)] and has a book on related themes about to be published [Gay and Lesbian Elders: History, Law, and Identity Politics in the U.S. (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.)]. There has been only minimal research in the UK as yet, which I am seeking to redress, in part, with my own PhD research (described in my bio above).
Older people with lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) identities face two different kinds of problems related to being ‘out’ and receiving care. They may be faced with unwanted exposure if they have been ‘in the closet’, as many people with LGB identities pre-Stonewall (during the time of criminalisation and psychiatric attempts at ‘cures’) may have been. This particularly applies to being recognised as partners of people who are terminally ill or in need of long-term care (e.g. dementia care). If they do not get such recognition, they may find themselves excluded from their loved-one’s care, and even death and funeral, by service providers and/or birth family. On the other hand, others who have previously been out (either fully or selectively) may feel it necessary to go back in the closet, particularly in terms of their own care, in order to avoid homophobia from care providers and fellow service users. Older people with transsexual identities also have very real concerns about the need for personal care in frail, dependent later older age and potential transphobic attitudes among care givers. On top of this, most LGBT activists fail to address the needs of older people within their communities, due to ageism, leaving older people with LGBT identities with nowhere to turn.
The UK, in comparison with the USA, enjoys far greater recognition of same-sex relationships and transgender identities and more formal policies relating to health and social care provision for older people with LGBT identities in housing, health and social care. However, older people with LGB identities, in both the USA and the UK, are inadequately protected from discrimination in law. In particular, new anti-discrimination legislation, the Equality Act 2010, explicitly excludes protection from harassment on the grounds of sexual orientation outside of the workplace, including in housing, health and social care services. This limitation followed vigorous lobbying from the Church of England and other religious organisations who were concerned that anti-homosexual teachings might otherwise constitute harassment in law, thereby limiting freedom of speech. However, opponents of the exclusions (who did not include Stonewall, the leading LGB lobbying organisation which, oddly, raised no objections) have argued that they may conflict with other elements of the European Convention on Human Rights, namely ‘prohibition of discrimination’ (Article 14), ‘the right to respect for private and family life’ (Article 8), ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ (Article 9), or ‘the prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment’ (Article 3).
As a result of these exclusions, the UK has created two-tier anti-discrimination legislation with people with LGB identities receiving lesser protection. The exclusions disproportionately affect older people with LGB identities, as they are more likely to be users of (sheltered) housing, and of health and social care services. However, their invisibility in academia, service provision and activism has meant the impact on older people with LG identities has been overlooked.
There is an urgent need, both nationally, and internationally, to address the marginalisation of older people with LGB identities, and the needs of older people with transgender identities, in order to resolve these inequities.

On February 21

On this day in ...
... 2001 (10 years ago today), following discussions with officials of the European Commission, Britain suspended all exports of livestock, milk, and meat in the face of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. The New York Times reported the anticipated harm to Britain,

already reeling from the prolonged crisis over mad cow disease, an outbreak of classical swine flu last summer and severe flooding on farms across the country over the winter.

(photo credit) More than 10 million sheep and cattle would be killed before the outbreak's end in October.


(Prior February 21 posts are here, here, and here, and here.)

Go On! Languages @ War

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

An interdisciplinary and international conference entitled Languages at War: policies and practices of language contacts in conflict will be held April 7 to 9, 2011, at the Imperial War Museum in London, England.
Kicking off the conference will be a discussion of art and war inspired by "Baghdad Car," an installation featured a bombed automobile, by prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller. Delivering keynotes during the conference will be: Joanna Bourke (far right), Professor of History in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London; Professor Mona Baker (near right), Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Manchester; and representatives from the British Council and the British Ministry of Defence. Panelists on the Provisional Programme hail from institutions in England, of course, but also in Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Macedonia, Slovenia, Spain, the United States, and Wales.
Questions to be addressed:
► What are the foreign language policies of government, military and multilateral agencies in conflict situations?
► What are the language-related experiences of those involved 'on the ground' in these conflicts?
► What are the implications for language intermediaries who work in conflict zones?
Details and registration here.

Study dispute resolution in Cyprus

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Anna Spain, who contributes this guest post)

I am pleased to announce a new program on international dispute resolution that I’ll be helping to teach this summer. It will take place in Cyprus, a venue that provides a unique and important context for the study of international dispute resolution.
In 1960, Cyprus became an independent nation after being under British colonial rule, thus aggravating the ongoing dispute between Turkey and Britain over the territory. Hostilities in 1963 and 1974 ultimately resulted in Turkish Cypriots declaring their independence as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from the Republic of Cyprus. (This history is the subject of a post yesterday as well as many prior IntLawGrrls posts.)
Today, the island nation is divided de facto into these two communities by an UN-administered buffer zone. The UN Peacekeeping Mission (logo below left) has served to maintain the ceasefire on the island since 1964 under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 186. Issues pertaining to property, territory, governance and the Turkish vs. Greek cultural identities remain, although economic development has led to increased cooperation in recent years.
In 2002, efforts to resolve the dispute began under the Annan Plan, which was formally presented to the parties by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on March 31, 2004. Although the Plan, which proposed terms to adjust the territory and address outstanding property disputes, was not accepted by the parties at that time, future efforts are being considered.
Our innovative study abroad program is inspired by this history.
It’ll be taught by Cesare Romano, Professor of Law at Loyola Law School and Director of the Cyprus Program and me. We will strive to understand the complex factors contributing to this and other international disputes around the world. As detailed here, we will spend one week at the University of Nicosia in the southern part of the island of Cyprus, and two weeks at Eastern Mediterranean University in the north. Participants will also visit the UN Peacekeeping Mission.
The program is designed to offer a comprehensive study of
► International dispute resolution mechanisms; and
► How those mechanisms are used to manage international conflict and to resolve international legal disputes.
The three-week, four-credit course will cover a broad spectrum of topics, including international law, the use of adjudication in international courts and tribunals, negotiation, mediation and other peacebuilding approaches.
I am delighted to be involved in this initiative, both professionally and personally.
The situation in Cyprus offers me an opportunity to expand my research and scholarship about how process, through international dispute resolution, can contribute to resolving conflict and influencing state-behavior. Identity-based conflicts and intra-state conflicts, like the one in Cyprus, are on the rise, expanding international disputes beyond the traditional inter-state context. As a result, new approaches are required. (See my recent article discussing this, Integration Matters: Rethinking the Architecture of International Dispute Resolution.) This initiative will also draw upon my prior experiences as an attorney-adviser at the U.S. Department of State – working with the UN Compensation Commission and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal – in considering ways to approach the property disputes that are a contributing factor to the situation on Cyprus.
On a more personal note, I began my work in this field 17 years ago when, as a high school student, I helped mediate racial tensions between black and white members of my community. I understand first-hand how sensitive and challenging addressing identity-disputes can be. I also believe that progress is possible, and I look forward to sharing this optimism with those who join us in Cyprus this summer.
This program is open to law students as well as members of the general public. Applications are due April 8, 2011. For more information or to apply, visit here.

On February 16

On this day in ...
... 1961 (50 years ago today), by a margin of 41 to 9, the House of Representatives of Cyprus voted to move toward membership in the British Commonwealth of Nations. The vote authorized the country's President, Archbishop Makarios, to seek a 5-year trial membership. Cyprus had won independence the previous August from Britain, which had administered the island in 1878 and annexed it in 1914. Cyprus remains a Commonwealth member to this day. (map credit)

(Prior February 16 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On February 9

On this day in ...
... 1916 (95 years ago today), Britain began conscripting men between 18 and 41 years of age to fight in the conflict that it had entered nearly 2 years earlier. A million persons already had volunteered, but more were needed due to heavy losses. (The July 1916 Battle of the Somme would claim 20,000 British lives on the 1st day alone.) By the time World War I ended, more than "4.5 million Britons served in arms (in addition to over three million troops from the British Empire)." Many in the latter group arrived only after significant resistance in their home countries, as described, e.g., here (photo credit) and here.

(Prior February 9 posts are here, here, and here.)

Today's Guest Bloggers: Christine Bell and Catherine O’Rourke

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome as today's guest bloggers Christine Bell (left) and Dr. Catherine O'Rourke (right), colleagues at the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.
► Christine serves as an Associate Director of the Institute (along with IntLawGrrls alumna Fionnuala Ní Aoláin), and also is a Professor of Public International Law at the university's Magee campus in Derry. She's the previous Director of the Centre for International and Comparative Human Rights Law at Queen's University in Belfast, her hometown. After reading law at Selwyn College, Cambridge, England, Christine earned an LL.M from Harvard Law School, supported by a Harkness Fellowship. Both a barrister and an attorney, she practiced for a period at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. She's served as chairperson of Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, as a founding member of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and as a member of the European Commission’s Committee of Experts on Fundamental Rights. She has taken part in various peace negotiations discussions, and given advice and training to diplomats, mediators, and lawyers.
In 2007, Christine was a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Her 2006 article "Peace Agreements: Their Nature and Legal Status" won the Francis Deák Prize, awarded annually "to a younger author for meritorious scholarship published in The American Journal of International Law." Among her other publications are 2 books: On the Law of Peace: Peace Agreements and the Lex Pacificatoria (2008) and Peace Agreements and Human Rights (2000).
► Catherine is a Lecturer in Human Rights and International Law at the University of Ulster and Gender Research Coordinator at its Transitional Justice Institute. She earned her LLB (Law and Politics) from Queen's University Belfast, her MSc Gender and Development from the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics, and her PhD from the University of Ulster. This past November, the Politics Studies Association of Ireland gave Catherine the Basil Chubb Prize, recognizing the year's best PhD thesis undertaken in Ireland in any field of politics, for her dissertation, "The Law and Politics of Gender in Transition: A Feminist Exploration of Transitional Justice in Chile, Northern Ireland and Colombia" (supervised by Christine and by Dr. Carmel Roulston, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Ulster). Catherine's other publications are here.
A Visiting Scholar in 2007-08 at American University School of International Service in Washington, D.C., Catherine also has been a Visiting Researcher at the law schools of Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, and Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She's been active in Amnesty International's Stop Violence Against Women campaign, provided guidance to the Northern Ireland women's sector on the Bill of Rights drafting process, and participated as a gender and security sector reform expert at the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice.
In their guest post below, Christine and Catherine discuss the contents and analyze the findings of their empirical research into what impact, if any, U.N. Security Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women and Peace and Security may have had on negotiation and drafting of peace agreements.
Christine and Catherine dedicate their post to Marjorie "Mo" Mowlam (below left), who died from a brain tumor in 2005, at age 55. Mowlam, Christine and Catherine write, was

a British Member of Parliament and the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland during the peace negotiations and production of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. She was one of the first women negotiators of a peace process, brought a different style to the process, and as we now know, did so while fighting cancer of the brain. Whether one agrees with her role as British Secretary of State, she was a powerful, innovative and feminist woman whose remarkable ways of communication played a key role in achieving a peace settlement. All sides would acknowledge her impact. She suffered political marginalization as a women due to her success and had she lived would undoubtedly be one of the woman who could have played a key mediation role in other conflicts.

Today Mowlam joins IntLawGrrls' other foremothers in the list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Criminal law & cyberfantasy

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Audrey Guinchard, who contributes this guest post)

Is virtual reality a fantasy outside the reach of criminal law?
This provocative question about the potential regulation of virtual worlds such as Second Life attracts divergent answers:
► Some consider it an anathema for law to regulate virtual worlds. Their regulation belongs to their creators and owners, not to Governments.
► Others argue that the arm of the law could well extend to virtual words, at least to those that are not games, where participants do not have to fulfil specific and pre-established objectives.

Indeed, some problematic behaviours do sometimes fit in the definition of offences. Fraud is an easy example, and some incidents are reported about people abusing the trust or misrepresenting facts in order to appropriate property or currency that can be exchanged into real-life money, mainly US dollars.

Nonetheless, other offences, like theft, remain difficult to apply to virtual worlds.
Should we then reform the law? Are we putting too much emphasis on something that is hardly relevant for the ordinary citizen?
Given the development of a strong economy in virtual worlds, with, for example, owners and users earning a living out of Second Life, we may want to consider these questions a bit more seriously rather than dismiss it per se -- as I do in my most recent article, "Crime in Virtual Worlds: The Limits of Criminal Law", published last year in the International Review of Law, Computers, and Technology.
Regarding offences against the person and public order, the outlook is different. Unless behaviours spill into the physical world, problems will consist of words and images exchanged and produced in the virtual world between avatars that may never reveal any details of a real-life person. As such, it is difficult to link the images, still or moving, to the physical world, whereas criminal law tends to assume a link between the representation of the person in words and images and the physicality of the world.
And yet, there are evolutions in the law that show an increasing awareness and desire to tackle those issues.

The United Kingdom, for example, decided in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to create an offence for possessing non-photographic images of child pornography. Could the offence define as including “the image of an imaginary child” (section 65 (8)) reach the fantasy world of Second Life?

It is difficult to predict how the law enforcement will view the suitability (or not) of the new offence to behaviours in virtual worlds. Moreover, the offence raises important questions of boundaries between fantasy and the real world, questions hardly touched upon in the course of the parliamentary debates. Actually, the debates were non-existent, had it not been for the concerns raised by Parliament's Joint Committee for Human Rights -- concerns that remained unanswered by Government.
Hence, the need for further studies to understand the power of images on oneself, so as to articulate possible responses by criminal law, if responses are needed.

On January 12

On this day in ...
... 1976 (35 years ago today), at the United Nations' headquarters in New York, the Security Council voted 11-1-3 to let the Palestine Liberation Organization take part in a debate on the Middle East. Abstaining were Britain, France, and Italy; the lone dissenter was the United States. The U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Daniel P. Moynihan, complained both that the PLO did not recognize Israel and that the PLO

is not a state, does not administer a defined territory, does not have the attributes of a state and does not claim to be a state.

(Prior January 12 posts are here, here, and here.)

On January 11

On this day in ...
... 1943, in what The New York Times called a "first concrete step toward the new era that is expected to follow the war in the Far East, with full restoration of China's sovereignty over her own soil," United States, Britain, and China signed treaties that ceded extraterritoriality and other special privileges that the 1st 2 countries had claimed over China (then flying the Republic of China/Nationalist flag at left) for the preceding hundred years. The Chinese-American treaty was signed in Washington; the Chinese-British treaty, by which Britain held on to its claims over Hong Kong, was signed in Chungking (today, the Sichuan province city of Chongqing).

(Prior January 11 posts are here, here, and here.)

On January 5

On this day in ...
... 1906 (105 years ago today), Kathleen Kenyon (left) was born in London, England, the eldest daughter of a father who would become director of the British Museum. Following her graduation in 1929 from Somerville College, Oxford University, Kenyon joined an excavation of ruins, led by the influential archeologist Gertrude Caton-Tomson, in what is now Zimbabwe. On her return to England she continued working, teaching, and publishing in the field of archeology. Kenyon became "world famous" in the 1950s, on account of her "[g]round-breaking concerning the Neolithic cultures of the Levant," conducted in the West Bank city of Jericho. (credit for 1969 photo by Jorge Lewinski) In 1973 Kenyon was named a Dame of the Order of the British Empire, equivalent to a knighthood. She died in 1978.


(Prior January 5 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 21

On this day in ...
... 1979, in London, delegates from Britain and 3 Africa-based groups signed the Lancaster House Agreement by which the territory then known as Rhodesia gained full independence from Britain. It had been the site of multiparty conflict, and Ian Smith had declared it independent years earlier. Signers in addition to Smith included Robert Mugabe (prior posts), a Patriotic Front leader who in 1980 would be elected President of Zimbabwe (flag at right), as the country is now known. Among the matters negotiated was land reform -- as we've posted, still a source of controversy.

(Prior December 21 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 16

On this day in ...
... 1773, the deadline date for the collection of taxes pursuant to the Tea Act recently passed by the Parliament in London, "some 50 men, unconvincingly disguised as Mohawk Indians," broke out in "war whoops" as they boarded 3 English vessels, split open its cargo of tea, and threw it into the harbor. This Boston Tea Party

was quickly restaged in other port cities in America and tended to polarize the sides in the widening dispute.

(image credit) As time would tell, the American Revolution was just a few years away.

(Prior December 16 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 13

On this day in ...
... 1921, in Washington, D.C., was signed a Treaty Between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, and Japan, by which the 4 countries agreed to "respect" one another's "rights in relation to their insular possessions and insular dominions in the region of the Pacific Ocean." This Four-Power Pact, as it was known, was among several agreements reached in the Washington Naval Conference that had begun the previous month and would run till the next February. Convening the conference outside the aegis of the League of Nations was U.S. President Warren G. Harding; leading the U.S. delegation was Harding's Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, later Chief Justice of the United States. (credit for 1922 photo of Secretary Hughes, in top hat, aboard U.S. Navy ship bound for Brazil's Centennial Exposition).

(Prior December 13 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 11

On this day in ...
... 1920 (90 years ago today), feminist and pacifist writer Olive Schreiner (left) died in South Africa, 65 years after her birth in what is now Lesotho. She was the 9th of 12 children born to a poor missionary family. A voracious reader of social theory, early on she rejected religion, and further

rejected the accepted stereotypical gender roles and espoused an equality of shared labour between men and women.

After working for years as a governess, Schreiner sailed to England, where her semi-autobiographical novel, The Story of an African Farm (1882), was published under a male pseudonym "because of a contemporary prejudice against women authors"; she revealed her identity in the 2d edition 9 years later. (credit for circa 1909 photo) Back in South Africa, she married and gave birth to a daughter, who died within in a day, sending Schreiner into deep depression. During the Boer War, Schreiner lost all her property and was interned for a year on account of her support for the Afrikaner side. Her Women and Labour (1911) is described as a "feminist 'bible' of the early twentieth century"; another late-in-life work argued in favor of rights for blacks in South Africa.

(Prior December 11 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 5

On this day in ...
... 1985 (25 years ago today), Britain confirmed that it was withdrawing from UNESCO, the U.N. Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, founded in 1946, of which Britain was a charter state. The decision took effect at year's end. British charges that the organization was "'politicized'" and "anti-Western" echoed complaints that had led the United States to quit in 1984. On July 1, 1997, Britain rejoined UNESCO; the United States followed suit a few years later. Today the Paris-based organization has 193 member states.

(Prior December 5 posts are here, here, and here.)

Landmark trials museum opens

Almost 65 years to the day after an Allied effort began at Nuremberg, a permanent museum chronicling the Trial of Major War Criminals and subsequent proceedings is now open.

Inauguration of the Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse/Nuremberg Trials Memorial (above right) took place yesterday. (photo credit) Featured were comments by:

► Representatives of the 4 countries that comprised the International Military Tribunal: for Britain, Attorney General Dominic Grieve; for France, former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas; for Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; and for the United States, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen J. Rapp.

► A representative of Germany, 2 dozen of whose nationals were defendants at the year-long 1st trial: Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

► A representative of the Nuremberg prosecutors, Benjamin B. Ferencz. Ferencz served as Executive Counsel at the dozen subsequent Nuremberg trials conducted by the United States, and lead prosecutor at one of them, the Einsatzgruppen Case.

This week, additional commemorative events will unfold (alas, nothing honoring women at Nuremberg).

And from now on, visitors can tour the museum, located in the Palace of Justice at Bärenschanzstraße 72, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays. Among the artifacts in the exhibition is the dock that held the former leaders of the Third Reich; it'd been in storage for decades. Courtroom 600 (right), where the trial occurred and which this 'Grrl was honored to visit a few years back, is still a working chamber and so will be open only when court is not in session.

Details here.