Summer school looks at human rights court

The International Court of Human Rights (ICHR) is the focus of a major summer school starting today.

The event is being hosted by NUI Galway and will run until Friday.

A host of key international experts in criminal law, including Judge Sang-Hyun Song, a judge in the Appeals Division of the International Criminal Court (ICC), will address students.

Other prominent speakers include Judge Kimberley Prost, Ad Litem Judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; and Professor Michael Scharf, who served as counsel to the US government during the investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie terrorist attack on flight PAN AM 103.

Following on from the ICC event, the annual Minority Rights, Indigenous People and Human Rights Law Summer School will take place from Saturday to June 22.

Key speakers include Professor Patrick Thornberry, professor of International Law at Keele University, England, and member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Michael Flaherty from the University of Nottingham, who was the first Irish member of the UN Human Rights Committee, will also address students.

The course provides participants with an overview of the legal, political and philosophical issues associated with international human rights law, and its relationship to minority rights and the rights of indigenous peoples.