Professors Deborah Pearlstein, Gabor Rona and Ramya Jawahar Kudekallu hosted a CLIHHR discussion on “The Crisis in Ukraine: Understanding the Legal Lay of the Land.” On March 2, as events were unfolding in Ukraine, the three explained the international legal and security dimensions of the crisis and answered questions about what might come next. Watch the recording here.
Professor Gabor Rona participated in two programs on accountability for war crimes, crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity committed in the Russia/Ukraine armed conflict.
On March 18, the Center on National Security at Fordham Law hosted Rona and Oona Hathaway (Yale) for a lunch talk on “Crimes of Aggression, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes in Ukraine.” The event was moderated by Center Director Karen Greenberg. On April 3, Rona participated in a Scholars’ Circle panel on Ukraine, "War Crimes and Justice for Victims and Survivors." Listen to the podcast here.
CLIHHR Director Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum was on a panel at the Brooklyn Public Library on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) crisis in the United States as part of the Lenapehoking exhibit. On March 14, members of Nichusak “my women friends,” a working group of activists and lawyers created by The Lenape Center to address the crisis, were featured in the panel. In addition to Kestenbaum, other speakers included Gloria Steinem, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Heather Bruegl and Caroline LaPorte.The panel members spoke about the shortcomings of our legal system, which does almost nothing to protect indigenous people from violence and sexual assault. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that Tribal Nations could no longer prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes against Natives on tribal lands. This, combined with the remote location of much of Indian country, the nearby “man camps” that house thousands of transient oil and mineral workers, the many centuries of sanctioned neglect and discrimination toward indigenous nations and media neglect, have created a crisis that is profound and urgent. Watch the recording here.
She also spoke at the Frontiers of Prevention conference on the resilience of survivors of gender-based violence in genocide and other mass atrocities. In addition, she spoke on a panel at Binghamton University’s Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, discussing post-atrocity resilience, not only as an individual feature but also as the consequence of various social, economic and political structures on individuals. The panel identified various mechanisms that can support and harm the resilience of survivors of conflict- and atrocity-related sexual violence.
