Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights

Last updated
The Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights
Map of Siracusa.png
Location of the city of Syracuse (red dot) within Italy.
Country Italy
Town Syracuse
Founded1972
Founded by M. Cherif Bassiouni
Website http://www.siracusainstitute.org

The Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, until 2017 Istituto Superiore Internazionale di Scienze Criminali (ISISC) (in English, International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences) is a not-for-profit organisation located in Syracuse, Italy, that was established in 1972. The organisation specializes in the design and implementation of human rights, rule of law, justice and capacity building projects throughout the world. The organisation pays particular attention to such issues that arise from situations in Arab and Muslim countries. [1]

Contents

History and accreditation

The institute was founded in 1972 by various experts, including Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni. It was founded initially by the AIDP and the City and Province of Syracuse in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce. Subsequently, the institute has set up accords with the City of Noto and the Region of Sicily. The president of the Siracusa International Institute since 2017 is Jean François Thony. [2]

It is a United Nations non-governmental organisation with consultative status (category II) and a non-governmental organisation with consultative status. [2]

Philosophy

The Siracusa International Institute is a not-for-profit organisation in consultative status with the United Nations and co-operates regularly with other regional, international, and educational organisations. It is devoted to researching, educating, and advancing the criminal sciences in their widest possible sense.

In this pursuit, the Siracusa International Institute actively engages in many diverse activities. For one, the institute works to provide training for legal professionals in the Arab and European world. In the same light, the institute engages in the specialised education of young academics and lawyers from around the world in the areas of International and European Criminal Law.

Involved in both scholarly and policy-oriented research, the institute produces publications on human rights, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and post-conflict justice. The Siracusa International Institute has worked in the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, often in cooperation with the Italian Foreign Ministry.

Projects

United Nations, the Council of Europe and other international organizations

The institute has undertaken a number of international initiatives, which have included committees of experts of the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Police Office (Europol), for the purpose of elaborating international instruments, and training seminars with the International Monetary Fund, the Basel Institute on Governance and the NATO School, among others. These initiatives include a number of activities related to the elaboration of the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, the Rome Statute, and its Rules of Procedure and Evidence.

A number of international instruments have been elaborated at the institute. Those the United Nations adopted include:

The institute also hosts expert meetings in cooperation with the Council of Europe and under the auspices of its Secretary-General. These activities with the Council of Europe include:

The Siracusa International Institute and the International Monetary Fund have co-ordinated an annual workshop in Syracuse on money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. The workshop focuses on the exchange of experience, information and ideas between the numerous government officials from Central Asia and Eastern Europe that attend.

Technical cooperation and training seminars

The Institute has conducted over 40 technical cooperation and training seminars for judges and public officials from developing countries on the topics of organized crime, international cooperation in penal matters, extradition, and the protection of human rights in the administration of justice. These programs are conducted in collaboration with the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the League of Arab States, the Organisation of American States, and other international organisations.

Several thousand judges, prosecutors, government officials, researchers, lawyers, and scholars have attended these programs, including those for Egyptian Prosecutors, Judges, Police and Army Officers co-sponsored by the Italian Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice, Prosecutors, and several programs for Albanian and Macedonian judges, prosecutors, and police officers co-sponsored by the Italian Presidency of Council and Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with the Council of Europe and Europol. A similar program for African jurists involving more than 200 judges, prosecutors, academics, and lawyers was held.

Conferences and specialization courses

The institute regularly hosts international conferences of experts on subjects of contemporary interest to the international scholarly community, gathering the world's leading authorities and experts in criminal sciences. The Siracusa International Institute also organizes Specialization Courses in International Criminal Law for Young Penalists in collaboration with several Universities. Other Specialization Courses are organized for junior prosecutors and defence lawyers.

Programs

The Siracusa International Institute is presently engaged in a number of technical assistance programs and research projects, which aim to significantly improve the rule of law in human rights and criminal law issues in conflict resolution and post conflict situations.

Afghanistan

The Afghanistan program, with which the Institute has been involved in since 2003, is directed towards the judicial and drugs sectors in Afghanistan. The program has seen the involvement of the Siracusa International Institute in the training of over 2,700 operators within the Afghan justice system and has been engaged with operators in the counter-narcotics system. In conjunction with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Institute organized a workshop on law reform in Afghanistan in April 2008. [3] In 2005, its president M. Cherif Bassiouni, as independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan to the UN, reported abuse [4] by US forces and private military contractors, as well Afghan military and police forces.

Iraq

The Siracusa International Institute is also involved with projects aimed to improve the education and training available, to law students and government operators, in Iraq within the fields of criminal law and human rights law. The Institute has carried out some of these programmes in conjunction with the International Human Rights Law Institute. [5] [6] In 2007 the Institute compiled a set of guidelines and recommendations for a strategic, integrated plan for the future of Iraqi's Rule of Law, which was sponsored by the Office of the Prime Minister and all relevant Iraqi institutions.

Arab World

The Institute has been actively engaged in programmes directed towards the Arab World since 1979. The institute organises conferences and seminars for students, academics and practitioners in the legal field coming from the Arab World, with the goal of fostering international co-operation in matters of criminal and humanitarian law. In more recent years, the Siracusa International Institute has been engaged in a technical assistance program in support of the Bahrain Justice and Law Enforcement Sectors on the International Protection of Human Rights and the Enhancement of Investigatory and Prosecutorial Capabilities of the Office of the Attorney General and a parallel technical assistance program in Support of the Bahrain Ministry of Interior for Law Enforcement and Police Officers.

Macedonia

In 2006, the Institute provided technical support to a program co-ordinated by the Italian Ministry of Justice, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Macedonia and the European Agency for Reconstruction. This project served to further develop and enhance the capacity of the Public Prosecutor's Office in helping with the establishment of a legal framework in line with EU standards, fostering the implementation of the rule of law, improving court procedures, tackling corruption and strengthening the independence, effectiveness and efficiency of the judiciary.[ citation needed ]

Fact-finding bodies

The research project on the "Establishment of Principles and Best Practices for International and National Commissions of Inquiry" highlighted the ad hoc nature of both international and national Commissions of Inquiry, and established the need to create a set of guidelines that would embody the collective experiences and lessons learned of past commissions. This research was presented at a Meeting of Experts which brought together a number of esteemed jurists, attorneys and scholars in the field of International Law as well as high-level United Nations and government officials, and presidents and prosecutors of the International Tribunals. It concluded with the publication of the 'Siracusa Guidelines for International, Regional and National Fact-Finding Bodies'.

Protecting Human Rights in North Africa

The project established a database of government, media and NGO reports and other public sources regarding events related to the conflict in Libya that began in March 2011. It also conducted a study compiling the history and context of the conflict, as well as providing a chronology and assessment of events which occurred, with a particular focus on allegations of human rights abuses by all involved parties. The purpose of the project was to supplement the work of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (UN COI) on Libya and to provide a resource for the post-commission United Nations and ICC work. The project's final report was converted into a 1,000-page book, titled 'Libya: From Repression to Revolution'.

Post conflict justice

The Siracusa International Institute was engaged in a research project on the theme of post conflict justice, titled 'Fighting Impunity and Promoting International Justice'. The project created model guidelines for the implementation of post-conflict justice mechanisms that most appropriately and adequately address issues arising out of each post-conflict situation. The project comprised a number of regional and themed studies, carried out by a steering committee of experts, the results of which were disseminated in six regional conferences. This project was carried out in co-operation with the International Human Rights Law Institute, the Association Internationale de Droit Penal and the Irish Centre for Human Rights.

Post-graduate fellows

The Siracusa International Institute offers one or two post-graduate resident fellowships per year. While in residence at the institute, the fellows involve themselves in activities of the institute, participate in the various conferences and seminars, and pursue an individual course of research. Some of the fellows have joined academia and are now professors, and others have pursued professional careers.

Publications

The institute has published over 149 books related to the proceedings and studies that the Institute is and has been involved in over the years. Many of the publications are the result of meetings or conferences that have been hosted at the Institute's headquarters and feature contributions from some of the world's leading experts in criminal law and human rights issues.

See also

Related Research Articles

International Criminal Court Intergovernmental organization and international tribunal

The International Criminal Court is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague, Netherlands. The ICC is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. It is intended to complement existing national judicial systems, and it may, therefore, exercise its jurisdiction only when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals. The ICC lacks universal territorial jurisdiction and may only investigate and prosecute crimes committed within member states, crimes committed by nationals of member states, or crimes in situations referred to the Court by the United Nations Security Council.

Crimes against humanity Deliberate, state sanctioned attack against civilians

Crimes against humanity are certain acts that are purposefully committed as part of a widespread or systematic policy, directed against civilians, in times of war or peace. They differ from war crimes because they are not isolated acts committed by individual soldiers but are acts committed in furtherance of a state or organizational policy. The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place at the Nuremberg trials. Initially being considered for legal use, widely in International Law, following the Holocaust a global standard of human rights was articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Political groups or states that violate or incite violation of human rights norms, as found in the Declaration, are an expression of the political pathologies associated with crimes against humanity.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Government organization

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is a United Nations office that was established in 1997 as the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention by combining the United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) and the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division in the United Nations Office at Vienna. and was renamed the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2002.

M. Cherif Bassiouni Egyptian academic

Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni was an emeritus professor of law at DePaul University, where he taught from 1964 to 2012. He served in numerous United Nations positions and served as the consultant to the US Department of State and Justice on many projects. He was a founding member of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University which was established in 1990. He served as president from 1990 to 1997 and then as president emeritus. Bassiouni is often referred to by the media as “the Godfather of International Criminal Law” and a “war crimes expert.” As such, he served on the Steering Committee for The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, which was launched to study the need for a comprehensive convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity, and draft a proposed treaty. He spearheaded the drafting of the proposed convention, which as of 2014 is being debated at the International Law Commission.

International criminal law

International criminal law is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. This article also discusses crimes against international law, which may not be part of the body of international criminal law.

Lyal S. Sunga

Lyal S. Sunga is a well-known specialist on international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.

The International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) is a global non-governmental organisation of prosecutors, established by the United Nations in 1995, Vienna. It has 183 organizational members from 177 countries, and individual members.

The International Network to Promote the Rule of Law (INPROL) is a global, online community of practice, comprising 3,000+ rule of law practitioners from 120 countries and 300 organizations. INPROL works to assist specialists in the rule of law to stabilize war-torn societies.

Hassan Bubacar Jallow

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 Prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) 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.

United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute Research institute of the United Nations

The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) is one of the five United Nations Research and Training Institutes. The Institute was founded in 1968 to assist the international community in formulating and implementing improved policies in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. Its work currently focuses on Goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, that is centred on promoting peaceful, just and inclusive societies, free from crime and violence.

Fatou Bensouda Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2012–2021)

Fatou Bom Bensouda is a Gambian lawyer and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). She served as Prosecutor from June 2012 to June 2021, after having served as a Deputy Prosecutor in charge of the Prosecutions Division of the ICC from 2004 to 2012. Before that she was Minister of Justice and Attorney General of The Gambia from 1998 to 2000. She has also held positions as a legal adviser and a trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute

The Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, established in 2000 as the Institute for Global Legal Studies, serves as a center for instruction and research in international and comparative law.

European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan Diplomatic mission

EUPOL Afghanistan (2007-2016) was a European Union mission supporting the reform efforts of the Afghan government in building a civilian police service in Afghanistan.

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) is an independent think tank providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical support focused on prevention and the rule of law, two important parts of effective counter-terrorism work. ICCT's work focuses on themes at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice sector responses, as well as human rights related aspects of counter-terrorism. The major project areas concern countering violent extremism, rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis, rehabilitation, civil society engagement and victims’ voices.

International Development Law Organization

The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the promotion of the rule of law.

The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative is a rule of law research and advocacy project of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. Started in 2008 by Professor Leila Nadya Sadat, the Initiative has as its goals the study of the need for a comprehensive international convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity, the analysis of the necessary elements of such a convention, and the drafting of a proposed treaty. To date, the Initiative has held several experts' meetings and conferences, published a Proposed Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity, and resulted in the publication of an edited volume, Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity, by Cambridge University Press. The draft treaty is now available in seven languages. The UN International Law Commission produced its own, similar, set of Draft Articles on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity, and a proposed treaty is now being debated by governments around the world.

Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict

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 United Nations 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 United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in April 2017. The work of the SRSG-SVC is supported by the United Nations Team of Experts on the Rule of Law/Sexual Violence in Conflict, co-led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), also established under Security Council Resolution 1888.

Marcia V. J. Kran


Marcia Vaune Jocelyn Kran is a Canadian lawyer and expert member of the UN Human Rights Committee, the first Canadian to be elected to the Committee in over a decade. Kran's career has spanned international human rights law, criminal law and political science, and includes positions in academia and civil society. In international human rights law, Kran has held a range of senior United Nations positions for nearly two decades. She lives in West Vancouver with her husband, Luis F. Molina.

References

  1. ↑ "International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences; Siracusa, Italy - (ISISC)", United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, retrieved 25 January 2010.
  2. 1 2 "INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HIGHER STUDIES IN CRIMINAL SCIENCES 1972 - 1999", UNITED NATIONS CRIME AND JUSTICE INFORMATION NETWORK, retrieved 25 January 2010.
  3. ↑ "Rule of Law in Afghanistan ", United States Institute of Peace, retrieved 25 January 2010.
  4. ↑ Rights: U.N. Afghanistan Envoy's Sacking Highlights Abuses, Secrecy By William Fisher. IPS News, 29 April 2005
  5. ↑ "Projects in Iraq", DePaul University College of Law, retrieved 25 January 2010.
  6. ↑ "ICLN Newsletter February/March 2006", The International Criminal Law Network, retrieved 25 January 2010.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.