The First DAG-3QD Peace and Justice Symposium

Online-symposium

Dear Reader,

We are very pleased to announce a collaboration with the Amsterdam-based Dialogue Advisory Group (DAG) to bring to our audience quarterly online symposia on topics of international peace and justice.

DAG is an organization which discreetly assists government, inter-government and other actors to confidentially manage national and international mediation efforts. Their work is by its nature confidential and therefore not well known to the public. Among their publicly known activities is DAG’s involvement in verifying the ETA ceasefire in Basque Country and the decommissioning of the weapons of INLA, a dissident Republican armed group in Northern Ireland.

DAG is directed by Ram Manikkalingam who also teaches politics at the University of Amsterdam. He advised the previous President of Sri Lanka during the peace process with the Tamil Tigers and prior to that advised the Rockefeller Foundation’s program in international peace and security.

In the DAG-3QD Peace and Justice Symposia internationally recognized figures will debate challenges in conflict resolution and human rights. One author will present a thesis in the form of a short essay and then the others will present critiques of that point of view. Finally, the initial author will also have an opportunity to present a rebuttal to the critiques.

For the first symposium the topic is whether military intervention is a desirable and viable means to end human rights violations. This is a particularly timely subject because of the ongoing international debate on how to end the recent turmoil in Syria.

The distinguished participants in our first symposium are:

  • David Petrasek: Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International affairs,
    University of Ottawa, formerly Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, has worked extensively on human rights, humanitarian and conflict resolution issues, including for Amnesty International (1990-96), for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-98), for the International Council on Human Rights Policy (1998-02), and as Director of Policy at the HD Centre (2003-07). He has taught international human rights and/or humanitarian law courses at the Osgoode Hall Law School, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at Lund University, Sweden, and at Oxford University.
  • Gareth Evans: Australian Foreign Minister (1988-96) and President of the International Crisis Group (2000-09), co-chaired the International Commission on State Sovereignty (2001), is a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Committee on the Prevention of Genocide, and is the author of The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Brookings Institution Press 2008, 2009). He is Chancellor of The Australian National University.
  • Kenneth Roth: Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organizations. Roth has also served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. You may follow him on Twitter: @KenRoth

I would like to thank the participants as well as Fleur Ravensbergen and Amanda Beugeling of the Dialogue Advisory Group for working closely with me in organizing these symposia. The logo for the symposia has been designed by Amanda Beugeling.

We look forward to your comments and feedback.

Yours,

S. Abbas Raza

NOTE: DAG and 3QD wish to acknowledge the generous contribution of the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research) toward these symposia, as well as the support of our readers.

THE SYMPOSIUM

[Click the links below to read the essays.]

  1. The New Interventionism – Promise and Reality by David Petrasek
  2. Mass Atrocity Crimes Are Everybody's, Not Nobody's, Business by Gareth Evans
  3. Stopping an Occasional Genocide is Better than None by Kenneth Roth
  4. Further Thoughts on the New Interventionism by David Petrasek

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Please leave comments about any of the essays in the symposium on this post. Thank you.