Principal speaker
Professor Mark Drumbl
Abstract
On September 27, 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced Ahmad al-Faqi Al Mahdi, a teacher from Mali, to nine years' imprisonment. The charges were intentional attacks upon cultural property in Timbuktu, notably, a set of Sufi shrines built upon the graves of Muslim clerics. This case is the first brought on these charges at the ICC, and is also the first ICC prosecution to be resolved through a plea bargain.
This seminar tells the story of the Al Mahdi case and how Timbuktu came to The Hague. It tells this story with a view to assessing the role of international criminal law, and war crimes prosecutions, in protecting cultural heritage. This seminar also unpacks thorny questions as to how to value cultural property and determine what, exactly, constitutes the kind of property whose destruction should be criminalized, which "cultures' should be protected, and who exactly "owns' the property in question.
About the speaker
Mark A Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington & Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the Transnational Law Institute. He lectures, practices, and publishes widely in the area of international criminal law, post-conflict justice, and public international law.
His book, Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2007) has won commendations from the International Association of Criminal Law (U.S. national section) and the American Society of International Law. In 2012, he published Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy (Oxford University Press), which has been effusively reviewed and critically acclaimed. He is co-editing the Research Handbook on Child Soldiers (with Dr. Jastine Barrett). He has additionally taught at a number of law faculties, including Oxford, Paris, Melbourne, Monash, Ottawa, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
About this seminar
Light refreshments will be provided from 5.30pm with the seminar to commence at 6.00pm.
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RSVP
RSVP on or before Tuesday 14 August 2018 , by email lawfutures@griffith.edu.au