It’s not often that we get to discuss the creation of a new treaty in international law – today, we look at the new treaty for Crimes against Humanity. It has been on our agenda for months, also because this treaty could have interesting ramifications for the understanding of all crimes of discrimination, including gender crimes. So here’s a new episode in our gender series!
Crimes against Humanity is a bit of a catch-all category of international crime but weirdly, it doesn’t have its own treaty. To close this gap, a growing group of lawyers have been campaigning since the 90s for the creation of a new text to be signed up to by states.
On October 10, the treaty proposal will undergo the next and decisive round of discussion at the UN (you can watch the sixth committee on UN WebTV). Ahead of that, we are joined by someone at the heart of this process, Leila Sadat, James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at Washington University in St Louis and former Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the ICC Prosecutor. And we also have another of the women really pushing this process forward, Priya Pillai, international lawyer and director of the Asia Justice Coalition. With them, we discuss why it’s important for conflicts going on today and – even though we already have the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute – what difference a treaty would make.
We also discuss how the movement grew and what concrete steps you need to take to create a new treaty – treatymaking 101 for observers like us. Leila and Priya also talk about the importance of this potential treaty not only for prosecuting and creating a sense of justice for victims but also for preventing the commission of these crimes and assisting other states (here’s our ep on mutual legal assistance). And we ask them how the new treaty would advance the notion of gender crimes, and what it could do for environmental crimes.
We also asked them for reading suggestions – Leila recommends The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, as well as The First Ladies by the same authors. While for a law-related read, she suggests Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin.
Priya is reading Wounded Tigris: A River Journey through the Cradle of Civilisation by another 2024 Yale World Fellow Leon McCarron. And Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, on how to write and manage the writer’s life.
