March 9, 2016, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Vanderbilt 218
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
RSVP and valid ID are required for this event. Please RSVP here or email Anam Salem.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
About The Book:
Fact-finding is at the heart of human rights advocacy and is often at the center of international controversies about alleged governmental abuses. In recent years there has been a huge increase in the number and variety of fact-finding mechanisms established and employed in practice. This volume brings together several in-depth critiques of the composition, methodologies, interpretive techniques and rigor of some fact-finding missions. Given the importance of fact-finding missions, it is essential that comparative and critical attention is devoted to key challenges in this field. The volume is unique because it moves beyond the ‘how to’ question, and instead focuses on what actually happens in practice. It does so in an interdisciplinary manner, combining insights from international law, political science, forensics, informatics and critical theory. The present volume combines case-studies with theory, maps crucial transformations in the field, and offers constructive ways to advance the practice of human rights fact-finding.
About The Book Launch:
The book launch will bring together the editors and several contributors, and will foster a multi-disciplinary dialogue on the practice of human rights investigations. The aim is to provide the audience with a deeper understanding of current issues in human rights fact-finding, and to debate the strategies that different disciplines offer to deal with these issues.
About The Panelists:
Philip Alston is UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and CHRGJ Faculty Director. Philip Alston teaches international law, international criminal law, and a range of human rights subjects.In 2014, he was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council as its Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. From 2004 to 2010, he was UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. Professor Alston’s profile can be found here.
Sarah Knuckey joined Columbia Law School in July 2014 as faculty co-director of the Human Rights Institute, director of the Human Rights Clinic, and the Lieff Cabraser Associate Clinical Professor of Law. Sarah Knuckey is an international human rights lawyer, professor, and special adviser to the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. She has carried out fact-finding investigations and reported on human rights and armed conflict violations around the world. Professor Knuckey’s full profile can be found here.
Margaret L. Satterthwaite is a Professor of Clinical Law at the NYU School of Law; Faculty Director at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice; Director of the Global Justice Clinic and Faculty Director of the Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. Professor Satterthwaite’s research interests include economic and social rights, human rights and counterterrorism, and methodological innovation in human rights. Professor Satterthwaite’s profile can be found here.