The former war crimes prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, is spending three months in The Hague and Wassenaar as the first ‘Hague Peace Philosopher'.
Goldstone served as the first prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He was recently appointed head of a UN human rights probe into Israel's military incursion in the Gaza Strip three months ago.
At the invitation of the city of The Hague and Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Richard Goldstone will be working on a new convention on crimes against humanity.
"There's a gap in international humanitarian law", Justice Goldstone told RNW. "We have a genocide convention...and you have on the other side the Geneva conventions dealing with war crimes, but there's no convention dealing with what comes in between, and that is very serious crimes against a civilian population that were defined for Nuremberg as crimes against humanity."
As well as working on this new convention, Goldstone will be give readings and master classes, lead debates and also produce a number of publications for Radio Netherlands Worldwide's International Justice website on his major theme: the growing cohesion between international humanitarian law and international human rights.
‘The Hague Peace Philosopher'
The Hague Peace Philosophers are invited to spend three months at Campus The Hague and in Wassenaar clarifying an issue relating to international peace and law, and making this accessible to a wider audience. They may be internationally renowned scientists, jurors, journalists, writers or artists. Goldstone is the first and arrived in The Hague on 1 April.
The holder of the title will spend this period inspiring interest in specific themes among the Dutch and the international community by means of readings, debates, interviews and publications.
‘The Hague Peace Philosopher' is an initiative resulting from the new Spinoza Fellowship, a partnership between the City of The Hague, the Netherlands Institute for Advance Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Radio Netherlands Worldwide and the University of Leiden's Campus The Hague.
***
Biography
Richard J. Goldstone was born on 26 October 1938 in South Africa and has spent his career working in many areas of human rights. In the aftermath of apartheid, he chaired the Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation (the Goldstone Commission), easing the transition to democracy in his native country, where he also served as an inaugural member of the Constitutional Court.
Following his appointment as Chief Prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in 1994, Goldstone helped shepherd these courts for two years.
He filed genocide and war crimes charges against Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for their roles in the "ethnic cleansing" of Bosnian Muslims, among other allegations. Recently, Goldstone has been appointment as chair of a UN committee to advise the tribunals on appropriate steps to preserve their archives and legacy.
Besides prosecuting international war crimes, Richard Goldstone was a member of an international panel to monitor the inquiry into Nazi activity in Argentina, chaired the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo and took part in the investigations into the Iraq Oil for Food program.
Earlier this month, Goldstone was appointed head of a UN human rights probe into violence during Israel's military offensive in the Gaza strip at the end of last year.
Goldstone also serves on the Board of Directors of several non-profit organisations that promote justice, including Physicians for Human Rights, the International Center for Transitional Justice, the South African Legal Services Foundation and Human Rights Watch.
The South African judge is an outstanding academic. He holds Honorary Doctorates from 17 internationally renowned universities and is a fellow of the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs of Harvard University. Since 2004, he has been teaching as a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School, NYU Law School, Fordham Law School and Georgetown Law School.
Justice Goldstone is the recipient of a plethora of local and international awards, including the MacArthur Award for International Justice. The award for will be conferred upon Goldstone in The Hague on 21 May.
Tags: crimes against humanity, Gaza, Goldstone, Hague, human rights, ICTR, ICTY, International Justice, UN
