Report Released

In recent months, piracy has found its way onto the general public's radar, largely due to the dramatic capture of the American captain of the Maersk Alabama off Somalia in April 2009. While the number of incidents has increased, for commercial shippers, protecting against piracy is not new. It is an ongoing problem, not only in the Gulf of Aden, but in many regions of the world. Piracy has led to the loss of seamen's lives, the loss of property, and the increased cost of doing business for shippers, among other consequences. By some reports, the majority of events go unreported.

How can private and public actors respond to this criminal activity on the high seas, especially off the failed state of Somalia? Several countries, including the United States, Great Britain, France, India, and China, are collaborating to patrol the corridor between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The UN Security Council has authorized extraordinary measures to allow these navies to act against pirates in sovereign Somali territory. This military activity has a preventative purpose. Yet as many commentators have remarked, the real challenge arises in apprehending and prosecuting pirates.

On October 16 - 17, 2009,  ACUNS, The American Society of International Law and One Earth Future Foundation are hosting a workshop that will assess the various options that exist in international law to prosecute pirates, including the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Tribunal, a special tribunal, and national prosecutions.    Workshop Program

What to do with pirates has become the central legal question of the current anti-piracy campaign? This workshop will seek to address this central legal question by assembling experts in international criminal law, the Law of the Sea, the International Criminal Court, and special tribunals to explore international law solutions to piracy.

Several key questions will be addressed:

• Can the crime of piracy be added to the jurisdiction of the ICC? If so, what is the process for doing so?
• Given the politics around the 2010 ICC review conference (the possibility that the crime of aggression will be added to the ICC's jurisdiction; the desire on the part of some to add terrorism), how likely is it that the ICC might try pirates in the near future?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using (third party) national governments to try apprehended pirates? How might universal jurisdiction work in practice with regard to the crime of piracy in the current era?
• What alternative governance options exist to prosecute pirates?
• What are the prospects for a special tribunal on piracy? How might this be established? By whom or under whose auspices? Through what processes?

Workshop Participants: (workshop is closed to the public)

ELIZABETH (BETSY) ANDERSEN is Executive Director and Executive Vice President of the American Society of International Law (www.asil.org), the United States' premier institution for advancing the study and use of international law. ASIL was founded in 1906 by Elihu Root, who served as both Secretary of War and Secretary of State for President Theodore Roosevelt. Ms. Andersen became Executive Director of ASIL in October 2006.  Prior to that, she served as Executive Director of the American Bar Association's Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (ABA CEELI) and as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division. Before joining Human Rights Watch, she served as Legal Assistant to Judge Georges Abi-Saab of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and as a law clerk to Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. Andersen is a graduate of Yale Law School, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Williams College. Her area of expertise is international humanitarian, human rights, and refugee law.

JOHN BELLINGER III is a partner in the international and national security practices in Arnold & Porter, LLP, in Washington, DC. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Bellinger served as Legal Adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from April 2005 to January 2009, having previously managed her Senate confirmation and co-directed her State Department transition team. As Legal Adviser, he directed a staff of 170 lawyers who advise the Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassadors, and the State Department on U.S. and international law applicable to U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Bellinger negotiated a number of treaties and international agreements, including the Third Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions; represented the United States before the international Court of Justice in the Medellin case and Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal; and promoted an active dialogue with U.S. allies and international organizations on human rights and international humanitarian law issues. Mr. Bellinger received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award for his efforts to promote international law. Prior to his appointment as Legal Adviser, Mr. Bellinger served from February 2001 to January 2005 as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House. He previously served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department during the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), as Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1996), and as Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster (1988-1991). Mr. Bellinger received his A.B. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1982, his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986, and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1991.

DAVID GLAZIER is Professor of Law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Previous to joining Loyola Law School, Professor Glazier was a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law and a research fellow at the Center for National Security Law, where he conducted research on national security, military justice and the law of war. He also served as a pro bono consultant to Human Rights First. Before attending law school, Glazier served twenty-one years as a US Navy surface warfare officer. In that capacity, he commanded the USS George Philip, served as the Seventh Fleet staff officer responsible for the US Navy-Japan relationship, the Pacific Fleet officer responsible for the US Navy-PRC relationship, and participated in UN sanctions enforcement against Yugoslavia and Haiti. Glazier has a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the editorial boards of the Virginia Law Review and the Virginia Journal of International Law. He won the Best Note Award for 2003-04 and the 2003 Raven Society Scholarship, founded Virginia Law Veterans and co-founded Virginia Law Families, and was made a member of the Order of the Coif. Glazier also earned an MA from Georgetown University in government/national security studies and holds a BA in history from Amherst College. He was admitted to the Virginia bar in 2004.

PATRICIA GOFF is Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. She is Associate Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, both in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She specializes in International Political Economy and International Relations Theory. Dr. Goff holds an Honours B.A. in French and Political Science from the University of Western Ontario; an M.A. in French Literature from McMaster University; a Diplôme d'études approfondies in Comparative Politics from the University of Paris; and a PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University. She is co-editor with Kevin C. Dunn of Identity and Global Politics (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2004) and co-editor with Paul Heinbecker of Irrelevant or Indispensable: the United Nations in the 21st Century (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005). She is also author of Limits to Liberalization: Local Culture in a Global Marketplace (Cornell University Press, 2007).

ROBERT HAYWOOD is the Chief Vision Officer and Executive Director for One Earth Future (OEF) Foundation. OEF is a new non-profit organization with a vision of using new and effective systems of global governance to achieve a world beyond war. Prior to joining OEF in 2008, Mr. Haywood was the Senior Economic Development Advisor to the British forces in Iraq, and was heavily involved in using economic incentives to promote stability. From 1985 to 2008 he was also the Director of the Secretariat of the World Economic Processing Zones Association (WEPZA), a non-governmental organization of over 40 of the world's leading economic processing zones, special economic zones and industrial estates. Mr. Haywood has completed projects on economic zone development in China, Honduras, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, UAE, Tanzania, Nigeria, Jordan, Russia, Kuwait, Vanuatu and many other countries. During the Oslo Peace Process in 1995 he mediated the industrial development agreement between the Israelis' and Palestinians and developed the concept for the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs) to provide a peace dividend to Jordan for making peace with Israel. Within five years QIZs generated over one billion dollars in annual trade and created over 60,000 new jobs in Jordan. Beyond economic zones, Mr. Haywood has been involved with international business since 1977, working on banking practices in the Middle East, and foreign investment development in Turkey. He managed a consumer products company in Hong Kong. He has also been an Associate Director and a Trustee of the Flagstaff Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to research and publishing information on international trade. Mr. Haywood holds an honors degree in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Master in Business Administration with distinction from Harvard University. He has done advance studies in International Business, Business Policy, and Economics at both Harvard, where he was on faculty for three years, and the University of Colorado, where he taught business policy courses.

EUGENE KONTOROVICH is an associate professor at Northwestern University Law School, where he specializes in constitutional and international law. His scholarship has been published in leading scholarly journals such as the Stanford Law Review, Virginia Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, American Journal of International Law, and cited in judicial opinions as well as the popular press. He attended the University of Chicago for college and law school, and ultimately taught law there as a visiting professor for two years. After law school, he clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Before entering law school, he worked as a reporter and editorialist at the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and other papers, and continues to provide occasional commentary in the press. He has also been consulted by attorneys representing alleged Somali pirates on trial in the U.S., Holland, and Kenya.
 
CHARLES LEACOCK, Q.C. is the Director of Public Prosecution for the Government of Barbados. He graduated from the Hugh Wooding Law School, Trinidad and Tobago in 1983 with the Certificate of Legal Education, having previously obtained the LL.B (Hons) degree in law from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill Campus) in 1981. In 1993 he was awarded the LL.M degree in Criminal Justice from King's College the University of London. An attorney-at-law for over 20 years he was called to the Inner Bar in 2001. From 2004 to 2007 he served as an Executive Committee Member of the International Association of Prosecutors. In 2009 he was named a Senator of the International Association of Prosecutors. In 1997 Mr. Leacock was the youngest person to date to be appointed to the post of Director of Public Prosecutions in Barbados. From 1997 Mr. Leacock has represented Barbados at Meetings of the International Criminal Court at the United Nations in New York and at The Hague, Netherlands. Mr. Leacock has appeared in several murder appeals at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London in 1999, 2003, 2004 & 2007. He has equally appeared in cases at the Caribbean Court of Justice since 2006. In July 2009 he represented Barbados in two cases at the Inter American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica.
BERNARD H. OXMAN is Richard A. Hausler Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and co-editor in chief of the American Journal of International Law. He has served as judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, in addition to serving as arbitrator in public and private international cases.  Professor Oxman received his A.B. and J.D. degrees from Columbia, then served on active duty in the International Law Division of the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, after which he joined the U.S. Department of State, where he was the first Assistant Legal Adviser for Oceans, Environment, and Scientific Affairs. He actively participated in the negotiation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as United States Representative to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and chair of the English Language Group of the Conference Drafting Committee. He teaches conflict of laws, international law, law of the sea, and torts at Miami, and has also taught at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), Paris (Assas), and Stanford. He was associate dean at Miami from 1987 to 1990, currently directs the law school's Master of Laws Program in Ocean and Coastal Law, and represents the law school on the university's Faculty Senate. Elected to the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations, he has written extensively on the law of the sea and other international law topics, and served twice on the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, most recently as Vice President.
 
MICHAEL J. STRUETT is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. His research interests include international relations theory, international organizations, and the politics of international law. He is interested in the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in world politics and particularly their participation in meetings of international organizations. He also has particular expertise on the International Criminal Court and the politics of war crimes trials. He is the author of The Politics of Constructing the International Criminal Court: NGOs, Discourse, and Agency (2008). Dr. Struett holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California - Irvine.

LEILA SADAT is the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at the Washington University School of Law and the Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. She is an internationally-recognized authority in international criminal law and human rights and a prolific scholar, publishing in leading journals in the United States and abroad. Trained in both the French and American legal systems, Sadat brings a cosmopolitan perspective to her work. She is particularly well-known for her expertise on the International Criminal Court, and was a delegate to the U.N. Preparatory Committee and to the 1998 diplomatic conference in Rome at which the Court was established, and currently represents the government of Timor-Leste in the Review Conference. Sadat has published a series of articles on the Court and an award-winning monograph, The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law (2002), which was supported by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace. She is the Director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a three-year project to study the problem of crimes against humanity and draft a comprehensive convention addressing their punishment and prevention. She has written extensively on the question of amnesties for atrocity crimes as part of the Princeton Project on Universal Jurisdiction, and has penned several highly regarded essays and articles on U.S. foreign policy following the September 11th attacks including Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Other Nightmares from the War on Terror, George Washington Law Review (2007). From May 2001 until September 2003, Sadat served on the nine-member U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. Professor Sadat is often heard on national media, and has an active speaking schedule. She currently serves as Chairwoman of the International Law Student Association, Vice-President of the International Law Association (American Branch) and the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP), and is a member of the American Law Institute. Sadat has also served as a member of the Executive Council, Executive Committee, Program Committee and Awards Committee for the American Society of International Law. She received her B.A. from Douglass College, her J.D. from Tulane Law School, summa cum laude, and holds graduate law degrees from Columbia University School of Law (LLM, summa cum laude) and the University of Paris I - Sorbonne (diplôme d'études approfondies).

BEN SCHIFF, Professor of Politics, received his B.A. (1973) from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. (1982) from the University of California at Berkeley. He focuses on international politics and international organizations. He has published books on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, on Afrikaners in South Africa at the end of apartheid, and about the International Criminal Court. His 2008 book, Building the International Criminal Court received the 2009 Chadwick Alger Prize from the International Studies Association for best book published in the previous year on international organization and multilateralism, and the 2009 ACUNS Book Award for best new book on the United Nations and UN system. He teaches courses on various aspects of international relations including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arms control, war, international organizations and international law.

RAMESH THAKUR is the inaugural Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Previously, Dr. Thakur was Vice Rector and Senior Vice Rector of the United Nations University (and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations) from 1998-2007. Educated in India and Canada, he was a Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand and Professor and Head of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University, during which time he was also a consultant/adviser to the Australian and New Zealand governments on arms control, disarmament and international security issues. Dr. Thakur was a Commissioner and one of the principal authors of The Responsibility to Protect (2001), and Senior Adviser on Reforms and Principal Writer of the United Nations Secretary-General's second reform report (2002). The author and editor of over thirty books and 300 articles and book chapters, he also writes regularly for quality national and international newspapers around the world. His most recent books include The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press, 2006) -- winner of the ACUNS 2008 award for the best recent book on the United Nations; and War in Our Time: Reflections on Iraq, Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (United Nations University Press, 2007).
 
HELMUT TUERK is Vice-President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, a post he has held since October 1, 2008. He has been a Member of the Tribunal since 1 October 2005. He holds a JD from the University of Vienna. Among his professional and diplomatic appointments, he has served the Government of Austria as Ambassador, Holy See, Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Republic of San Marino (2005-2006); Member, Austrian National Security Council (2002-2004); Director-General, Office of the Austrian Federal President (1999-2004); Ambassador, United States of America, Permanent Observer to the Organization of American States, Ambassador, Commonwealth of The Bahamas (1993-1999); Deputy Secretary-General for Foreign Affairs (1991-1993); and Legal Adviser, Head of International Law Department (1982-1993). He has participated in the International Conference on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (1988); the Preparatory Commission for the International Seabed Authority and for the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (1989-1994); Informal consultations of the UN Secretary-General on the Law of the Sea (1993-1994); the Assembly of the International Seabed Authority (2003-2005); Panel of Arbitrators, International Energy Agency Dispute Settlement Centre (1986-1993); and the Committee of Legal Advisers of the Council of Europe on Public International Law (Vice-Chairman, 1988-1989; Chairman, 1990-1992). He was the Austrian Representative, Council of the International Seabed Authority (1996-1998) and President, Meeting of States Parties of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1997-1998). He has published widely in several languages on topics ranging from international human rights law to the law of the sea, and the challenge of dealing with terrorism at sea, including "Combating Terrorism at Sea - the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation", University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review, vol. 15 Special Issue Spring 2008; and "Combating Terrorism at Sea - the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation", in Legal Challenges in Maritime Security, (M.H. Nordquist, R. Wolfrum et al. (eds), 2008).

BETH VAN SCHAACK is Associate Professor of Law at the Santa Clara University School of Law, where she teaches and writes in the areas of human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, public international law, international humanitarian law, and civil procedure. Professor Van Schaack joined the law faculty from private practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP. As a Senior Associate at "MoFo", she practiced in the areas of commercial law, intellectual property, international law, and human rights. In particular, she was trial counsel for Romagoza v. Garcia, a human rights case on behalf of three Salvadoran refugees that resulted in a plaintiffs' award of $54.6 million. She was also on the criminal defense team for John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban." Prior to entering private practice, Professor Van Schaack was Acting Executive Director and Staff Attorney with The Center for Justice and Accountability, a non-profit law firm in San Francisco dedicated to the representation of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses. She was also a law clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Since 1995, she has served as a legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an organization dedicated to staging a legal accounting for the crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia. In 2006, she served as Prosecutor for the International Citizen's Tribunal for Sudan, presided over by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, which presented the case under international criminal law against President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan. Professor Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School.