English Unlimited Upper Intermediate Teachers Pack Photocopiable Cambridge University Press 2011

Unit 9 The human rights lawyer

Video documentary transcript

Dr Guglielmo VerdirameMy name is Guglielmo. Im Italian. Im a lecturer in Public International Law at the University of Cambridge and Im a barrister practising in London. My field of interest is Public International Law, which is the law that governs relations between states. I became interested in Public International Law after taking a course taught by a very inspirational professor who later became the first woman judge of the International Court of Justice, and indeed the president of the International Court of Justice.

So, when people think International Law, they think United Nations. And quite rightly so because the United Nations is the principal institution that, er, deals with issues of International Law. The United Nations was established after the Second World War. Membership of the United Nations is universal by now; every state in the world is a member of the United Nations. So, the United Nations created other organisations that deal with more specific problems. The General Assembly, for example, has established a programme that deals with children, UNICEF; er, a programme that deals with refugees, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees; a programme that focuses on development, the UNDP. So, these organisations are part of the UN family and, legally, they are subsidiary programmes created by the United Nations.

So, after deciding that I was interested in Public International Law intellectually, I took the decision to explore the field in a more practical sense. I wanted to see International Law in action, so I decided to undertake research in Africa on the condition of refugees. The issues that I investigated in particular were the extent to which refugees enjoyed their fundamental human rights in countries of asylum. And thats where I encountered the United Nations during a real operation, because the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, had a significant presence in Kenya. There were two very large refugee camps which were administered by the United Nations. Its main function there was to provide

humanitarian assistance to the refugee population, but the issues in which I became particularly interested were questions of accountability, because, inevitably, when you exercise significant powers you also, er, have to be accountable for the manner in which, er, you exercise them.

The first decade of the 21st century was a very difficult time in international relations. At one point it seemed that the United Nations was going to be one of the victims of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 because states, er, were less, erm, willing to act through international institutions, including the United Nations. Inevitably when national security is at stake, states will, er, be more disinclined to use international institutions, but it is also true that over the years, er, states recognised by states I mean really the entire international community that there was no alternative to action through international institutions. If one looks at the practice of the Security Council after 9/11, one will find, er, various examples of interventions by the Security Council in international crises and in many cases with a surprisingly large degree of international consensus. It is true there were a number of conflicts that were particularly controversial after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but there were also many other situations in which states actually decided, in agreement, to deal with a particular situation by adopting certain measures that range from the imposition of sanctions on certain actors to, er, the use of force.

One area in which I would very much like to see an improvement in the record of the United Nations is accountability, which is where my interest in the United Nations as an institution began. Inevitably, when an organisation exercises more powers, the issue of accountability will become more and more central, and on any view the United Nations today is an important but also a very powerful organisation, and one that I think we ought to expect should exercise its powers in a way that is accountable to its beneficiaries and that is transparent.