Sinha Basnayake, PC is a Sri Lankan lawyer. He was a former director of the General Legal Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs [1] and a member of the UN Internal Justice Council. [2]
Son of the prominent lawyer Hema Henry Basnayake, QC; he was educated at the Royal College, Colombo and graduated with a first-class in law from the University of Oxford. After qualifying as a barrister he joined the UN as a Legal Officer in the International Trade Law Branch of the Office of Legal Affairs, [3] eventually becoming its director. Appointed a President's Counsel by the government of Sri Lanka, he has served in many committees of the UN.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal was an ad hoc court located in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome, Italy on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002. As of February 2024, 124 states are party to the statute. Among other things, it establishes court function, jurisdiction and structure.
Louise Arbour, is a Canadian lawyer, prosecutor and jurist.
The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of its French name, was a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti from 2004 to 2017. It was composed of 2,366 military personnel and 2,533 police, supported by international civilian personnel, a local civilian staff, and United Nations Volunteers. The mission's military component was led by the Brazilian Army and commanded by a Brazilian.
Theodor Meron, is an American-Israeli lawyer and judge. He served as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism). He served as President of the ICTY four times and inaugural President of the Mechanism for three terms (2012–19).
Lyal S. Sunga is a well-known specialist on international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.
Gregory H. Stanton is the former research professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. He is best known for his work in the area of genocide studies. He is the founder and president of Genocide Watch, the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the Chair of the Alliance Against Genocide. From 2007 to 2009 he was the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
K. Jayachandra Reddy was a judge of the Supreme Court of India.
Hassan Bubacar Jallow is a Gambian judge who has served as Chief Justice of the Gambia since February 2017. He was the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 2003 to 2016, and the Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) from 2012 to 2016, both at the rank of United Nations Under Secretary-General. He served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General from 1984 to 1994 under President Dawda Jawara.
John Clint Williamson is an American diplomat, lawyer, and educator who has served in a variety of senior-level roles with the United States Government, the United Nations, and the European Union. He currently serves as the Senior Director for International Justice at Georgetown University, on a joint appointment between the Law Center and the Department of Government. Ambassador Williamson heads the US Department of State-funded project at Georgetown that provides support to the Ukrainian government in its investigation and prosecution of crimes arising from the current conflict. He is the Lead Coordinator of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA), the agreed trans-Atlantic community mechanism for addressing atrocity crimes in Ukraine. In this capacity he coordinates, on behalf of the EU, UK and US governments, the work of the five implementing entities that comprise ACA.
Peter Mohan Maithree Peiris, PC is a Sri Lankan lawyer and diplomat. He served as the Attorney General of Sri Lanka from 2008 to 2011 and was the de facto Chief Justice of Sri Lanka from 2013 to 2015 when President Maithripala Sirisena declared his appointment void ab initio in 2015. He has been serving as the Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations since January 2021 and was elected Vice President of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in June 2023.
United Nations Security Council resolution 935, adopted unanimously on 1 July 1994, after recalling all resolutions on Rwanda, particularly 918 (1994) and 925 (1994), the Council requested the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to establish a Commission of Experts to investigate violations of international humanitarian law during the Rwandan genocide.
War crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War are war crimes and crimes against humanity which the Sri Lanka Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been accused of committing during the final months of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009. The war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by both sides; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; sexual violence by the Sri Lankan military; the systematic denial of food, medicine, and clean water by the government to civilians trapped in the war zone; child recruitment, hostage taking, use of military equipment in the proximity of civilians and use of forced labor by the Tamil Tigers.
The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was a commission of inquiry appointed by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2010 after the 26-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka to function as a Truth and reconciliation commission. The commission was mandated to investigate the facts and circumstances which led to the failure of the ceasefire agreement made operational on 27 February 2002, the lessons that should be learnt from those events and the institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken in order to prevent any recurrence of such concerns in the future, and to promote further national unity and reconciliation among all communities. After an 18-month inquiry, the commission submitted its report to the President on 15 November 2011. The report was made public on 16 December 2011, after being tabled in the parliament.
John Henricus de Saram is a Sri Lankan lawyer and diplomat, who served as Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in New York. He was a former director of the Office of the Legal Counsel, United Nations Office of Legal Affairs and was a former member of the United Nations International Law Commission.
The Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka was a 2011 report produced by a panel of experts appointed by United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The report is referred to by some as the Darusman Report, after the name of the chairman of the panel.
Nihal Mahendra Sudrikku Jayawickrama is a Sri Lankan academic. He was the former Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice (1970–1977), Professor of Law at University of Hong Kong (1984–1997), Ariel F Sallows Professor of Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (1992–1993), and Executive Director of Transparency International (1997–2000). He is now an independent legal consultant, and has been the Coordinator of the UN-sponsored Judicial Integrity Group since 2000.
Mohamed Chande Othman is a Tanzanian lawyer and a former Chief Justice of Tanzania.
Michael Benedict Emmerson CBE KC is a British barrister, specialising in public international law, human rights and humanitarian law, and international criminal law. From 2011 to 2017, he was the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism. Emmerson is currently an Appeals Chamber Judge of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals sitting on the Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has previously served as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Special Adviser to the Appeals Chamber of the ECCC.
The Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (OSRSG-SVC) is an office of the United Nations Secretariat tasked with serving the United Nations' spokesperson and political advocate on conflict-related sexual violence, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC). The Special Representative holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the UN and chairs the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The mandate of the SRSG-SVC was established by Security Council Resolution 1888, introduced by Hillary Clinton, and the first Special Representative, Margot Wallström, took office in 2010. The current Special Representative is Pramila Patten of Mauritius, who was appointed by UN Secretary General António Guterres in 2017. The work of the SRSG-SVC is supported by the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict, co-led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPO), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), also established under Security Council Resolution 1888.