Three Week Plan
Today, I received the first bad news of the summer. I will probably not be able to attend a proceeding at the International Criminal Court. Both the proceedings I wanted to attend were rescheduled for well past my time in The Hauge and the ICC goes on holiday after this week. I had originally planned on observing the opening of a trial, The Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda. When the Ntaganda trial was moved, I found an Article 110 hearing (a reduction in sentence) schedule for this Thursday for The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. Unfortunately, when I went to double check the time of the hearing on this morning, I learned that it is no longer on the court calendar. I have chosen to retain the small hope that the rescheduling is a website error, at least untill I find an official press release of the scheduling change.
I realize that I complained about being past the halfway point in my last post. But, how little time I have left hit me again today, as I sent my supervisor Katalin my work plan for the last three weeks. Every remaining day will be filled with work on my environmental constitutional rights paper, my research on African jurisprudence, and a new project on the constitutional implementation of gender rights. The last project requires me to create profiles of different countries and their progress implementing constitutionally guaranteed equal treatment, regardless of gender. Even though I have just started, it is interesting (and occasionally disheartening) to see the gap between the strong language of a constitution and the lackluster reality of lethargic implementation. Then again, perhaps it is just the nations I have work on thus far that fall short of the mark.