2014 Law Dialogs
Zainab Hawa Bangura – Zainab Hawa Bangura of Sierra Leone was appointed to serve as Special Repressive on Sexual Violence in Conflict at the Level of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2012. Prior to her appointment, Ms. Bangura was the Minister of Health and Sanitation for the Government of Sierra Leone. She was previously the second female Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, including Chief Adviser and Spokesperson of the President on bilateral and international issues. Ms. Bangura has experience working in peacekeeping operations from within the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), where she was responsible for the management of the largest civilian component of the Mission, including promoting capacity-building of government institutions and community reconciliation.
Andrew Beiter – Mr. Beiter, a Social Studies educator, serves as Director of Youth Education at the Robert H. Jackson Center, as well as Director of the Summer Institute for Human Rights and Genocide Studies in Buffalo, NY. He also serves as co-Director of the Educators’ Institute for Human Rights, which recently led a conference for Rwandan teachers in Kigali. A Regional Education Coordinator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Mr. Beiter also serves as a Teacher Fellow for the Lowell Milken Center for Tolerance in Kansas, and as a consultant for the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo.
Hans Corell – Ambassador (ret.) Hans Corell served as Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the UN from 1994-2004. In this capacity, he was head of the Office of Legal Affairs in the UN Secretariat. Before joining the UN he served as Ambassador and Under-Secretary for Legal and Consular Affairs in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1994. Ambassador Corell has served as a member of Sweden’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly 1985-1993 and has had assignments related to the Council of Europe, OECD and the CSCE (now OSCE). He co-authored the CSCE proposal for the establishment of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia transmitted to the UN in February 1993. He was the Secretary-General’s representative at the 1998 UN Conference that adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and involved in the establishment of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.
Morris Davis – Professor Davis has been a member of the faculty at the Howard University School of Law since 2011 where he teaches legal writing, appellate advocacy and national security law. A retired Air Force Colonel, he served as chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay from 2005 to 2007, resigning from the position due to political interference in the trials and pressure to use evidence obtained by torture. From 2008 to 2010, he was a senior specialist in national security and head of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division at the Congressional Research Service. He was fired from this position for authoring opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post critical of the Obama administration’s detainee policies. Davis is a recipient of a Hugh Hefner Foundation First Amendment Award and was featured in a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington entitled “Those Who Dared: 30 Officials Who Stood Up For Our Country.”
Joseph Karb – Mr. Karb is a middle school Social Studies educator who also serves as Director of Teacher Initiatives at the Robert H. Jackson Center. Recently selected as the National Middle School Social Studies Teacher of the Year, Mr. Karb is a teacher fellow with C-SPAN, and facilitator of the national human rights video contest sponsored by Speak Truth to Power and the American Federation of Teachers. His work has also been featured in social studies research studies, PBS Newshour and Britannica Online.
Tiina Intelmann – Ambassador Intelmann is Ambassador-at-Large of Estonia for the International Criminal Court. On 12 December 2011, she was elected President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute at the tenth session of the Assembly. She has a broad professional experience in international matters and relations and therefore she comes to the Presidency with a long history of involvement in multilateral negotiations. She has previously served as the Permanent Representative of Estonia to the United Nations as well as to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and as Ambassador to the State of Israel. She has also served as Undersecretary for Political Affairs and Relations with the Press in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia.
Valerie Oosterveld – Professor Oosterveld was appointed Associate Dean (Research and Administration) effective July 1, 2014, Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario. Her research and writing focus on gender issues within international criminal justice. She teaches Public International Law, International Criminal Law and International Organizations. She is the Acting Director of Western University’s Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and is affiliated with the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research. Before joining Western Law in July 2005, Valerie served in the Legal Affairs Bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. She was a member of the Canadian delegation to the International Criminal Court negotiations and subsequent Assembly of States Parties. She also served on the Canadian delegation to the 2010 Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda.
Leila Nadya Sadat – Professor Sadat is the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law and Israel Treiman Faculty Fellow at Washington University School of Law and has been the Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute since 2007. In 2008, she launched the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative and, since then, has served as Chair of its Steering Committee. In December 2012, she was appointed Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity by International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and earlier that year was elected to membership in the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. In 2011, she was awarded the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Paris, France. Sadat is an internationally recognized human rights expert specializing in international criminal law and justice and has published more than 75 books and articles. From 2001-2003 Sadat served on the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom.
William A. Schabas OC MRIA – Professor Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is the editor-in-chief of Criminal Law Forum, a quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, and President of the Irish Branch of Criminal Investigation. From 2002-2004 he served as one of three international members of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Professor Schabas served as a consultant on capital punishment for the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, and drafted the 2010 report of the Secretary-General on the status of the death penalty. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006, and elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2007. He was awarded the Vespasian V. Pella Medal for International Criminal Justice of the Association Internationale de Droit Pénal, and the Gold Medal in the Social Sciences of the Royal Irish Academy. Professor Schabas has authored more than 20 books dealing with international human rights law and has published more than 300 articles in academic journals.
Michael P. Scharf – Professor Scharf is Interim Dean and Joseph C. Baker – Baker & Hostetler Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In 2005, Scharf and the Public International Law and Policy Group, a NGO he co-founded and directs, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work. Scharf served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for UN Affairs, and delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2008, Scharf served as Special Assistant to the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal. He is the author of sixteen books, and won the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit for outstanding book in 1999, and the International Association of Penal Law’s book of the year award for 2009 . Scharf produces and hosts the radio program “Talking Foreign Policy,” broadcast on WCPN 90.3 FM. Scharf is the first professor in the world to offer an international law MOOC.
David Scheffer – Professor Scheffer is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and Director, Center for International Human Rights, at Northwestern University School of Law. He is also the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Expert on United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials. Professor Scheffer is the former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001) and author of the award-winning “All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals” (Princeton University Press, 2012). He received the Berlin Prize in 2013.
Federico Barillas Schwank – Federico Barillas Schwank is a Legal Advisor for International Humanitarian Law at the American Red Cross. Previously, Federico worked at International Center for Not-for-Profit Law and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He has assisted civil society groups seeking legal reform and represented indigenous peoples and victims of abuse before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and in U.S. asylum procedures. Before moving to Washington D.C., Federico worked representing low-income migrant workers at the Southern Poverty Law Center and led the outreach program at the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama.
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