Peter Bouckaert

Last updated
Peter Bouckaert
Born
Pellenberg, Belgium
Alma mater University of California, Santa Barbara
Stanford University Law School
Known forHuman Rights advocacy

Peter Bouckaert is a human rights activist who served as emergency director for Human Rights Watch from 1997 until 2017. He has investigated Human Rights abuses in Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the Central African Republic. He now works for Blue Ventures, a marine conservation group.

Contents

His is the subject of the 2014 documentary E-Team, a documentary about the atrocities in Syria and Libya

He has been based in Madagascar since 2019, where he manages a farming project in Andasibe, Moramanga.

Early life

Bouckaert was born in Pellenberg, Belgium, in 1970, and grew up on a farm. [1] He spent part of his youth in the United States.

Education

He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1993, and from Stanford University Law School in 1997. [2]

Career

Bouckaert began work for Human Rights Watch immediately after law school. He was involved in early efforts to investigate and publicize atrocities carried out by the Serbian government in the Kosovo region in the late 1990s. [3] This work is credited with having inspired the Clinton Administration to support the NATO intervention in Kosovo. [4]

Bouckaert helped to create the emergency program for Human Rights Watch to increase the ability of the organization to respond rapidly to major human rights crises. In addition to his work in Kosovo, he was involved in human rights investigations in Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the Central African Republic. [2] [5] The film E-Team documents his investigative work in Libya during the NATO intervention in 2011. [4]

Bouckaert serves on the board of directors for The New Humanitarian [6] and is employed by Blue Ventures conservation organisation. [7]

Awards and honors

In 2012, he was won the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Santa Barbara. [8] He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leuven in 2016. [2]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Kosovo War 1998–1999 armed conflict in Kosovo

The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The conflict ended when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by beginning air strikes in March 1999 which resulted in Yugoslav forces withdrawing from Kosovo.

Kosovo Liberation Army Ethnic-Albanian nationalist paramilitary organization (1992–1999)

The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo, the vast majority of which is inhabited by Albanians, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s. Albanian nationalism was a central tenet of the KLA and many in its ranks supported the creation of a Greater Albania, which would encompass all Albanians in the Balkans, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation. Throughout its existence the KLA was designated as a terrorist group by FRY.

The legitimacy under international law of the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been seriously questioned. The UN Charter is the foundational legal document of the United Nations (UN) and is the cornerstone of the public international law governing the use of force between States. NATO members are also subject to the North Atlantic Treaty.

Yugoslav Wars Series of wars fought in Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies fought in the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001, leading up to and resulting from the breakup of the Yugoslav federation in 1992. Its constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fueled the wars. Most of the wars ended through peace accords, involving full international recognition of new states, but with a massive human cost and economic damage to the region.

Nataša Kandić

Nataša Kandić is a Serbian political writer, human rights activist and coordinator of the RECOM Reconciliation Network, founder and ex-executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), an organization campaigning for human rights and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia, focusing on the Serbian role in the conflict. It was formed in 1992. The HLC's research was integral to the war crimes prosecutions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), particularly the "smoking gun" video linking Serbian military forces to the Srebrenica massacres. She has won numerous international awards for her human rights work. She is a figure of controversy in Serbia where she was the subject of a defamation lawsuit by former President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić.

2004 unrest in Kosovo Period of ethnic conflict in 2004 between Kosovan Serbs and Albanians

The 2004 unrest in Kosovo is the worst ethnic violence case in Kosovo since the end of the 1998–99 conflict. The violence erupted in the partitioned town of Kosovo Mitrovica, leaving hundreds wounded and at least 14 people dead. The unrest was precipitated by misleading reports in the Kosovo Albanian media which falsely claimed that three Kosovo Albanian boys had drowned after being chased into the Ibar River by a group of Kosovo Serbs. UN peacekeepers and NATO troops scrambled to contain a raging gun battle between Serbs and Albanians. Serbs, call the event the March Pogrom, while the Albanians call it the March Unrest.

Russia incurred much international criticism for its conduct during the Second Chechen War, which started in 1999. The governments of the United States and other countries condemned deaths and expulsions among civilians. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) passed two resolutions in 2000 and 2001 condemning human rights violations in Chechnya and requiring Russia to set up an independent national commission of inquiry to investigate the matter. However, a third resolution on these lines failed in 2004. The Council of Europe in multiple resolutions and statements between 2003 and 2007 called on Russia to cease human rights violations. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) between 2005 and 2007 conducted legal cases brought by Chechens against the Russian government, and in many of these cases held Russia responsible for deaths, disappearances and torture.

The Gornje Obrinje massacre refers to the killing of 21 Kosovo Albanians, belonging to the same family, in a forest outside the village of Donje Obrinje on 26 September 1998 during the Kosovo War. Among the victims were women and children.

Attack on Prekaz

The Attack on Prekaz, also known as the Prekaz massacre, was an operation led by the Special Anti-Terrorism Unit of Serbia on 5 March 1998, to capture Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters deemed terrorists by Serbia. During the operation, KLA leader Adem Jashari and his brother Hamëz were killed, along with nearly 60 other family members.

Drenica massacres

The Drenica massacres were a series of killings of Kosovo Albanian civilians committed by Serbian special police forces in the Drenica region of central Kosovo.

War crimes in the Kosovo War War crimes committed during the Kosovo War

A series of war crimes were committed during the Kosovo War. The forces of the Slobodan Milošević regime committed rape, killed many Albanian civilians and expelled them during the war, alongside the widespread destruction of civilian, cultural and religious property. According to the Human Rights Watch, the vast majority of the violations from January 1998 to April 1999 were attributable to Serbian police or the Yugoslav army. Violations also included war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, such as kidnappings and summary executions of civilians. In 2014, the Humanitarian Law Center released a list of people killed or gone missing during the war, including 8,661 Kosovo Albanian civilians, 1,797 ethnic Serbs and 447 civilians of other ethnicities such as Romani people and Bosniaks.

Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) is a non-governmental organisation with offices in Belgrade, Serbia, and Pristina, Kosovo. It was founded in 1992 by Nataša Kandić to document human rights violations across the former Yugoslavia in armed conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, later, Kosovo.

The outbreak of the Libyan Civil War was followed by accusations of human rights violations by rebel forces opposed to Muammar Gaddafi, Gaddafi's armed forces, and NATO. The alleged violations include rape, extrajudicial killings, ethnic cleansing, misconduct and bombings of civilians.

Hilmi M. Zawati, D.C.L., Ph.D., is an international criminal law and human rights jurist and Chair at Centre for International Accountability and Justice (CIAJ).

Lake Radonjić massacre

The Lake Radonjić massacre or the Massacre at Lake Radonjić refers to the mass murder of at least 34 Kosovo Serb and Kosovo Albanian civilians near Lake Radonjić, by the village of Glodjane, in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 9 September 1998. The massacre took place during the Kosovo War. The perpetrator was the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The Batajnica mass graves, are graves that were found in 2001 near Batajnica, a suburb of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The graves contained 744 Kosovo Albanians, civilians, killed during the 1998-99 Kosovo War.

Insurgency in Kosovo (1995–1998)

The Insurgency in Kosovo began in 1995, following the Dayton Agreement. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began attacks, which targeted Serbian governmental buildings and police stations. The insurgency led to the Kosovo War in February 1998.

Russian war crimes Violations of the laws of war committed by the Russian Federation

Russian war crimes are the violations of the law of war, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions, consisting of war crimes and crimes against humanity, of which the official armed and paramilitary forces of the Russian Federation are accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This also extends to include aiding and abetting crimes of proto-states or client states armed and financed by Russia, including Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic. These have included the summary execution of captured enemy combatants, the mistreatment of prisoners during interrogation (torture), and the use of violence against civilian non-combatants, including rape.

The Attacks on Likoshan and Qirez were large-scale police attacks that took place at the onset of the Kosovo War in the villages of Likoshan and Qirez.

References

  1. E-Team (documentary), K Chevigny and R Kaufman, 2014, Netflix
  2. 1 2 3 "Peter Bouckaert". www.kuleuven.be. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
  3. Peter Bouckaert and Fred Abrahams, "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia : a week of terror in Drenica : humanitarian law violations in Kosovo," New York: Human Rights Watch 1999
  4. 1 2 Nelson, Rob (2014-01-20). "Sundance Film Review: 'E-Team'". Variety. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
  5. Bearing Witness – Stanford Lawyer Magazine – Stanford Law School
  6. "About Us". The New Humanitarian. 2015-10-01. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
  7. "Peter Bouckaert". Blue Ventures. Retrieved 2022-06-08.
  8. Dec 22, Liane Martindale Thu; 2011 | 12:00am (2011-12-22). "Peter Bouckaert". The Santa Barbara Independent. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
  9. Zawati, Hilmi M. "Counting Down to Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide, in Hilmi M. Zawati, The Triumph of Ethnic Hatred and the Failure of International Political Will: Gendered Violence and Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010) pp. 91-137".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. "Center of the Storm: A Case Study of Human Rights Abuses in Hebron District | Office of Justice Programs". www.ojp.gov. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
  11. "Photojournalism Daily: Jan. 6, 2015". Time. Retrieved 2022-01-22.