16-26 July 2012 | CIL-Supported Event
The 5th Annual Summer Institute in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights
Organized by the:
Asian International Justice Initiative,
a collaboration between the UC Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center and the East-West Center
in partnership with:
Singapore Management University School of Law,
the University of Zurich Competence Center for Human Rights,
the International Institute for Child Rights and Development,
and the Human Rights Resource Centre.
With generous support from:
Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore
Mazars
Overview
The 5th annual Summer Institute in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Human Rights took place from 16 to 26 July 2012 in Singapore and focused on the topic of business and human rights. The Summer Institute is a regionally based workshop held in partnership with organizations in Southeast Asia to consider key IHL and human rights issues, past and present, facing the region. Established in 2008 by the Asian International Justice Initiative, a collaborative project between the East-West Center and the War Crimes Studies Center, the Summer Institute is designed for participants working across a broad range of fields and disciplines within the Asia Pacific region or whose work has an Asia Pacific focus. Previous Summer Institute sessions have attracted lawyers, journalists, government officials, and NGO workers from more than 15 countries.
The 2012 Summer Institute was a unique collaborative effort of organizing institutions from Asia, the United States and Europe involving the East-West Center (EWC), U.C. Berkeley’s War Crimes Studies Center (WCSC), the Singapore Management University (SMU) School of Law, the University of Zurich Competence Centre for Human Rights, the Human Rights Resource Center for ASEAN (HRRC), and the International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD). It was hosted by SMU in Singapore, and was made possible through generous contributions by multiple sponsors, in particular the Centre for International Law (CIL) at the National University of Singapore and the audit and consultancy group Mazars.
This year’s course was the first to host representatives of the UN Working Group on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, which has recently published its first official report. Puvan Selvanathan, who serves as both Asia representative and Working Group Chair, shed light on the new UN mechanism’s practical scope and engaged with participants on how to maximize the mechanism’s impact in the region. The Summer Institute also brought together leading organizations, such as the Institute for Human Rights and Business and EarthRights International, who discussed the findings of recently launched reports focusing on corporate responsibility within the region.
The Summer Institute faculty included distinguished practitioners and experts from the region and beyond, including Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia Representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights; Ong Keng Yong, Singapore’s High Commissioner to Malaysia; Mark Hodge of the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights; and Hans Petter Graver, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo.
