Conference Part 2
Last Thursday I attended a conference at the Peace Palace. This was an amazing opportunity. The Peace Palace first off, hosts the International Court of Justice, the Court of Permanent Arbitration, The Hague Academy of International Law, and the Peace Palace Library. The Palace is essentially the seat of international law. It is cool, is what I am trying to say.
Hosted by the American Society of International Lawyers conference addressed the boundary dispute between South Sudan and Sudan. The lawyer who spoke talked about worked as council for the Sudanese government in the dispute. It was interesting to hear him talk about how the Court of Permanent Arbitration should have granted the Abyei region to Sudan. The constitutional process in Sudan was the first constitutional process in researched this summer and every source I found said that the region belong to the south. It was nice to hear from the other side.
The conference also showed that I know a lot about South Sudan, which I knew close to nothing about at the start of the summer. I understood the different aspects of the disputed issues, like the various tribes in the region and the dispute over who had documented control of the region. There was talk about riparian rights, avulsion and accretion, so I felt like I was putting my property class to good use.