Week Three: Sunsets, Pocketwatches, and the International Criminal Court
To start out the week I continued helping out with the Global Partnership Council launch. We refined the list of initial invitees and updated the concept note on the Council with the feedback that our first draft needed to include a more persuasive element describing why IBJ is creating the council now. We also got to work on the memo proposal for the first project that the Council will set out to accomplish. We are not set on a title yet, but the idea is that we set a goal for expansion, i.e. taking on something like 100,100k more pro bono cases. The Global Partnership Council will collaborate with IBJ on accomplishing that goal.
I also got to work with the other legal interns on a larger legal project surrounding the International Criminal Court. The goal of the ICC is to be irrelevant. When a war crime, genocide, or other mass crime is committed in a country, we want to be able to trust the legal infrastructures within that country to properly prosecute those responsible. When a case comes before the ICC, they evaluate whether a country is able to conduct genuine proceedings (as opposed to “sham” trials) As a group of legal interns, we’re going to evaluate the ICC case law to figure out what the Court considers when determining the ability of a country to prosecute mass crimes.
We’ll then evaluate the legal infrastructure in various regions and determine what can be done to bolster the legal systems in these regions. I will focus on countries in Africa, and my recommendations will be centered around IBJ’s work in building legal infrastructure and strengthening civil society. The idea is that if more funding goes to organizations like IBJ, they will be able to slowly build international confidence in state courts, and the ICC will not need to impede state sovereignty to get involved.
Using some IBJ contacts, the legal interns arranged a meeting with Michael C. Karavas, an defense attorney at the International Criminal Court, to discuss these issues. He was also lead counsel for defendants at the Yugoslavia Tribunal following the genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina. It was really cool to speak to someone so actively involved in the ICC’s daily work. He was able to give us a realistic overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the ICC as an institution.
Outside of work this week:
- The first actual week of summer brought 80-degree weather. The office gets quite warm during the day, given the lack of central AC in the building (I will be putting the AC on at FULL blast when I get back to Virginia). The heat meant we brought our swimsuits and beach towels to the office every day. One day we went swimming during lunch, then came back to the office to work the rest of the afternoon.
- The beach 10 minutes from the office charges 2 CHF per visit during peak hours, but as of this week, John, Kristen, and I are card-carrying-season-pass-members of the Bains de Paquis. We’ve been going multiple times per day, so the purchase of season passes was truly a momentous occasion. We stayed until sunset several days this week, and my camera roll is once again full of Lake Geneva sunset pictures.
- On one day this week, Kristen and worked from Pages & Sips, where the staff are starting to recognize us. I’ve been sampling their selection of fresh artisanal juices, and this week I tried the fresh white peach juice, which was incredible.
- Olivia, another William & Mary international intern, came to visit me this weekend! We had a lovely late dinner in Old Town on Friday night and caught up on how our summers have been going.
- On Saturday, we ate breakfast at Pages & Sips, then went to the Patek Phillipe Museum of watches. I have never felt particularly passionate about watches, but the museum was pretty incredible. They had some of the first portable clocks ever created on display and literally hundreds of the most wildly ornate pocket watches you can imagine.
- On Sunday we went to the beach, stopped by the UN’s Palace of Nations, and visited Geneva’s Art History Museum.
