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!

Guest Blogger: Megan Fairlie

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Megan Fairlie (left) as today's guest blogger.
An Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, Megan's currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Albany Law School. She previously taught on the LL.B. and LL.M. programmes at the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she was a member of the Transitional Justice Institute, under the directorship of IntLawGrrl’s guest/alumna Fionnuala Ní Aoláin. Prior to teaching in Belfast, Megan was a doctoral fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, where she earned her LL.M. in International Peace Support Operations and her Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law. Megan has since returned to Galway a number of times to teach at, the Centre’s International Criminal Court Summer School. Megan earned her J.D. with honors from Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, Virginia.
She teaches courses including Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Procedure and a seminar on the International Criminal Court, and her publications reflect those specialties. In her guest post below, Megan writes about her forthcoming article on the relationship between the United States and the International Criminal Court.
Megan sits on the board of Self Help Africa-USA, a charity is designed to assist rural communities in Africa to become self sustaining. It focuses in particular on supporting women via business and microcredit programs.
Heartfelt welcome!

Groundwater law courses U.N. currents

We've posted in the past on issues related to water -- its scarcity, the inescapable need for it, claims of right to it, and increasing attention to same. Well worth noting, then, is the initiative featured in a new ASIL Insight by Kerstin Mechlem (left), Lecturer at the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster, in Northern Ireland.
Mechlem underscores the adoption last month by the United Nations' 60-year-old legal research arm, the International Law Commission, of draft articles for an international framework convention on transboundary aquifers; that is, on groundwater sources that cross national frontiers. (The draft articles are expected soon to be available here.)
After outlining the scope of the problem and events leading to adoption, Mechlem points to key aspects of the draft articles:
► the principle of equitable and reasonable utilization of water resources;
► the imposition of an obligation not to cause significant harm; and
► the imposition of an obligation to cooperate, by sharing information about water and entering agreements to protect water resources.
One novelty in the draft articles is the recognition of "the need to protect aquifers against harm, resulting, for example, from fertilizers or pesticide use or industry discharge," she writes.
The articles stop short of embracing the precautionary principle. The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development stated:

Principle 15
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

The Rio Declaration was proclaimed in 1992, and Principle 15 has gained currency since then. Nonetheless, in the view of the ILC, precaution has not yet become a principle of customary international law. Mechlem writes: "Thus, the draft articles refer in Article 12 to a 'precautionary approach' rather than to the 'precautionary principle.'"
Mechlem, who served from 2002 to 2006 as a Legal Officer for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, concludes her ASIL Insight by stating:
"Despite their shortcomings the draft articles are a significant step in the protection of transboundary aquifers." She looks forward one day to entry in force of "binding framework convention." (groundwater image credit)