In this webinar PhD researchers and staff at Ulster University discuss what is it like to do a PhD in Law at Ulster. PhD researchers Roua Al-Taweel, Micheál Hearty and Leah Rea discuss why they wanted to do a PhD, their experience of applying to Ulster and their PhD journey to date. Prof Rory O'Connell then discusses the studentship opportunities at Ulster and Prof Karen Fleming highlights the AHRC Northern Bridge DTP. Prof Siobhán Wills outlines the work of the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and Prof Gráinne McKeever research on law and social justice. The session concludes with Prof Cath Collins who explains the components of a research proposal.

Professor Monica McWilliams was a founding member of the Women’s Coalition, a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland and Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2005-2011), Oversight Commissioner for prison reform in Northern Ireland (2011–2015) and is on the Independent Reporting Commission for the disbandment of paramilitary organisations. Monica has been the author of numerous publications, including groundbreaking research on domestic and intimate partner violence in Northern Ireland. She is a specialist in conflict resolution, chaired Interpeace, an international peacebuilding NGO, and served on the Board of Trocaire, the Irish development agency. She has worked with women’s groups in conflict zones world-wide, most recently with Syrian women involved in the negotiations in Geneva.

Stand Up, Speak Out charts Monica’s activism over the decades from the civil rights protests in the 1960s to her involvement in the women’s movement and the founding of the Women’s Coalition. It also includes her role in the signing and implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Prof Fidelma Ashe acted as discussant following opening remarks by Prof McWilliams. Our PhD researchers Nada Ahmed Mostafa Kamal Ahmed and Caitriona Mackel co-chaired the event.

This is part of TJI’s ‘What’s the Craic? Seminar Series’ organised by our PhD researchers Nada Ahmed Mostafa Kamal Ahmed and Caitriona Mackel.

This is a recording of an event organised by the Transitional Justice institute Ulster University and Federal University of Goiás Panellists: Ana Paula Oliveira (Mothers of Manguinhos), Monica Cruz (Justica Global) Ulisses Terto Neto (TJI and UFG), Siobhán Wills (TJI)

At this seminar, part of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival, members of the Constitutional Conversations Group discussed the rights and equality commitments that remain outstanding from the Belfast Good Friday Agreement The seminar features a few short presentations from the group on 'Rights & Wrongs' followed by a Q&A session. Presenters included Eilish Rooney, Mark Bassett, John Gormley, Paddy Kelly and Colin Harvey.

At this TJI public seminar, part of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival, Prof Rachel Rebouché discussed the most recent challenges to reproductive rights in the US.

Dean Rebouché shared her thoughts on recent legislation and court cases including cases that are making their way through the court system in the United States, and which may wind up before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Rachel Rebouché is the Interim Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law. Prior to her appointment as Interim Dean, she was the Associate Dean for Research, a position she held from 2017 to 2021. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Temple’s Center for Public Health Law Research.

Dean Rebouché is a leading scholar in reproductive health law, feminist legal theory, and family law. She is an author of Governance Feminism: An Introduction and an editor of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field. She is also the editor of Feminist Judgments: Family Law Opinions Rewritten, published by Cambridge University Press, and an author of the sixth edition of the casebook, Family Law, with Professors Leslie Harris and June Carbone. In addition, she is writing a book on reproductive health law that is under contract with NYU Press and editing a collection of essays for Law & Contemporary Problems on the pandemic’s effects on issues in contract law.

Dean Rebouché has served as a co-investigator on two grant-funded research projects related to reproductive health, one housed at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and another funded by the World Health Organization. Her recent research also includes articles in law reviews and in peer-reviewed journals on relational contracts, gestational surrogacy, prenatal genetic testing and genetic counseling, collaborative divorce, parental involvement laws, and international reproductive rights.

Dean Rebouché received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LL.M. from Queen’s University, Belfast, and a B.A. from Trinity University. Prior to law school, she worked as a researcher for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast. After law school, Dean Rebouché clerked for Justice Kate O’Regan on the Constitutional Court of South Africa and practiced law in Washington, D.C., where she served as an associate director of adolescent health programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families (formerly, the Women’s Legal Defense Fund) and as a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center.

Leah Rea (PhD researcher) and Dr Joanna McMinn will co-chair this event, with Prof Siobhán Wills (TJI Director) making opening remarks.

This final panel of the CEDAW and SOGI workshop addressed some cross-cutting issues (conflict, asylum, hate speech) and included final concluding reflections from Marion Bethel, current CEDAW Committee member.

Cross Cutting Issues

Lucia Baca (Colombia Diversa)

Niels-Erik Hansen (Immigration Lawyer)

Kseniya Kirichenko (IGLA-World (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association))

Concluding Reflections

Marion Bethel (Current Member of the CEDAW Committee)

Women’s enjoyment of the substantive rights guaranteed under CEDAW – legal equality, nationality, education, employment, health, economic and social life, rurality, family life, political participation – are inextricably informed and shaped in important ways by their sexual orientation and gender identity.

This workshop sought to explore the current and potential activities of the CEDAW Committee on the human rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. It identified strengths in the CEDAW Committee’s current approach to sexual orientation and gender identity and pinpointed areas for future development. The workshop aimed to make both a theoretical and practical contribution to the interpretation of CEDAW and to the activities of the CEDAW Committee, States, civil society and international organisations.

The workshop was organised by Dr Meghan Campbell (Birmingham University Law School), Dr Loveday Hodson (Leicester University Law School) and Dr Catherine O’Rourke (Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute).

The workshop was hosted by the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University.

This panel of the CEDAW and SOGI workshop addressed health and education.

Speakers:

• Alexa Moore (Transgender Northern Ireland)

• Marisa Hutchinson (International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (Malaysia / Global South))

• Mel Duffy (Dublin City University)

Chair: Meghan Campbell

This workshop sought to explore the current and potential activities of the CEDAW Committee on the human rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. It identified strengths in the CEDAW Committee’s current approach to sexual orientation and gender identity and pinpoint areas for future development. The workshop aimed to make both a theoretical and practical contribution to the interpretation of CEDAW and to the activities of the CEDAW Committee, States, civil society and international organisations.

The workshop was organised by Dr Meghan Campbell (Birmingham University Law School), Dr Loveday Hodson (Leicester University Law School) and Dr Catherine O’Rourke (Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute).

The workshop was hosted by the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University.

This episode continues our workshop on CEDAW and SOGI, with a panel focused on relationships and families.

Speakers:

• Danielle Roberts (HereNI)

• Imani Kimiri (National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission of Kenya)

Chair: Loveday Hodson (Leicester)

Women’s enjoyment of the substantive rights guaranteed under CEDAW – legal equality, nationality, education, employment, health, economic and social life, rurality, family life, political participation – are inextricably informed and shaped in important ways by their sexual orientation and gender identity.

This workshop sought to explore the current and potential activities of the CEDAW Committee on the human rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. It identified strengths in the CEDAW Committee’s current approach to sexual orientation and gender identity and pinpoint areas for future development. The workshop aimed to make both a theoretical and practical contribution to the interpretation of CEDAW and to the activities of the CEDAW Committee, States, civil society and international organisations.

The workshop was organised by Dr Meghan Campbell (Birmingham University Law School), Dr Loveday Hodson (Leicester University Law School) and Dr Catherine O’Rourke (Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute).

The workshop is hosted by the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University.

This workshop sought to explore the current and potential activities of the CEDAW Committee on the human rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. It identified strengths in the CEDAW Committee’s current approach to sexual orientation and gender identity and pinpoint areas for future development. The workshop aimed to make both a theoretical and practical contribution to the interpretation of CEDAW and to the activities of the CEDAW Committee, States, civil society and international organisations.

This opening panel includes keynote addresses from:

• Lia Nadaria (Current Member of the CEDAW Committee)

• Victor Madrigal-Borloz (UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity)

The workshop was organised by Dr Meghan Campbell (Birmingham University Law School), Dr Loveday Hodson (Leicester University Law School) and Dr Catherine O’Rourke (Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute).

The workshop is hosted by the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University.

Ireland has made WPS a key focus of its foreign policy and its tenure on the UN Security Council, including through taking up the role of co-chairing the Independent Experts’ Group (IEG) on WPS. It does so at a time when the dynamics on the Council present clear obstacles to advancing, and protecting progress on, the WPS agenda. This discussion explored opportunities for Ireland to influence, advance and strengthen the Women, Peace and Security Agenda through a discussion of key country contexts and themes.

Speakers included:

Áine Hearns, Director of the Conflict Resolution Unit, Ireland’s Dept of Foreign Affairs;

Madeleine Rees, Secretary-General of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF);

Horia Mosadiq, Afghan human rights activist and Executive Director, Conflict Analysis Network;

Assitan Diallo, President of the Association des Femmes Africaines pour la Recherche et le Développement (AFARD) in Mali; and

Linda Cabrera, Director of Sisma Mujer, Colombia.

Dr Salome Mbugua, Commissioner with the Irish Human Rights & Equality Commission and founder of AkiDwA, will chair the event.

The event was organised by the Irish Peace and Conflict Network, which includes the TJI.

The author Prof Rory O'Connell discusses his new book with Prof Conor Gearty (LSE), Prof Ruth Rubio Marin (Sevilla), to mark the launch of 'Law, Democracy and the European Court of Human Rights' (Cambridge 2020). Dr Catherine O'Rourke (TJI) chairs the discussion. The book is available on the Cambridge webpage and Cambridge has provided an Open Access copy of the conclusion.

In a dawn raid on 18 August 2022, Israeli forces forcibly shut down seven Palestinian human rights groups’ offices. On 26 August 2022, twenty-four UN appointed human rights experts stated that these forced closures, along with other measures ‘restricting the legitimate activities of human rights defenders,’ has resulted in ‘serious infringements of the rights to freedom of association, opinion and expression and the right to participate in public and cultural affairs, which Israel is fully obliged to fulfill, respect and protect.’ .

This panel event was co-hosted by the TJI, Christian Aid Ireland and ABColombia.

This event explored the upcoming report of the Truth Commission in Colombia, with a focus on two innovative measures within the Colombian transitional justice approach: the role of business in conflict and peacebuilding, and the exclusion of crimes of sexual and gender based violence from amnesties in the Colombian conflict. The panel examined the intersectionality between gender and ethnic discrimination and conflict sexual violence in Colombia.

SPEAKERS

Eamon Gilmore is the European Union Special Representative for Human Rights (since March 2019) and has also served as EU Special Envoy for the Colombian Peace Process since October 2015. He was Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade from 2011 until July 2014.

Pablo de Greiff is currently Senior Fellow and Director of the Transitional Justice Program at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice of the School of Law at NYU. He was the UN’s first Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. He is former Research Director for the International Center for Transitional Justice.

Leigh A. Payne is Professor of Sociology and Latin America at the University of Oxford, St Antony's College.

Laura Bernal-Bermúdez is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. She is also affiliated to the Latin American Centre of the University of Oxford as a research consultant.

Their new book, with Gabriel Pereira, is Transitional Justice and Corporate Accountability from Below: Deploying Archimedes' Lever (Cambridge University Press, 2020) tracks and analyses transitional justice mechanisms for holding economic actors accountable for human rights violations in dictatorships and armed conflict: international, foreign, and domestic trials and truth commissions from the 1970s to the present in every region of the world.

María Adelaida Palacio Puerta is a lawyer specializing in education for citizenship and a lecturer in human rights with a background in teaching, consulting, working as a public official and work in women’s organisations. She served as Undersecretary of Government of Bogotá; coordinator of the legal area of Corporación Humanas; consultant for the National Women's Network, IOM and USAID. Currently, currently she works as Manager of the Sisma Mujer Corporation, a partner of Christian Aid Ireland.

Specially written histories have become an important tool in Irish state responses to ‘historical’ injustice, particularly those affecting women, their sexual, reproductive and family lives. Whatever form an inquiry takes, a ‘definitive’ history will be at its centre. Sometimes it will be authored by academic historians, though generally in collaboration with state-appointed legal advisors. Usually, it will be informed by the findings of some wider investigation, which purports to hear survivor evidence. The MBHCI Report contains the latest such history. It adapts and extends tactics also visible in predecessor reports, which dealt with abuses in industrial schools and Magdalene laundries, and obstetric violence in maternity hospitals.

This paper addresses how legal histories appear in these state responses to abuse, and especially in the MBHCI Report itself. It outlines three features: (i) a simplistic account of the relationship between state and religious law (ii) uncritical reliance on past Irish law (and on limited readings of past law) as the standard against which past abuses are evaluated and (iii) strategic use of current Irish law both to control evidence-gathering processes, and police later attempts to challenge the ‘official’ history produced in the Report. The paper will focus in detail on (ii) and invite discussion of alternative models of state engagement with difficult legal inheritances.

Máiréad Enright is Reader in Feminist Legal Studies and Leverhulme Research Fellow at Birmingham Law School.

The TJI was delighted to welcome Professor Karen Engle to discuss her important new book: 'The Grip of Sexual Violence: Feminists Interventions in International Law' published by Stanford University Press (2020). The monograph traces three decades of feminist engagement with international law and institutions with a focus on how and why both feminist activism and international law became “gripped” by the issue of sexual violence in conflict. It traces the impact that women’s human rights advocates have had on international law and vice versa, concentrating on their treatment of sexual violence in conflict. It considers a variety of international institutional and legal sites and debates in which sexual violence in conflict has played a central role: those involving military intervention, international criminal law, and human peace and security.

The seminar focuses in particular on these dynamics at the UN Security Council.

Learn more about the Transitional Justice Institute's taught postgraduate programmes in transitional justice, human rights, gender and conflict. Hear from current and former students. Apply here: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/transitional-justice-institute/study/llm-master-of-laws.

In this talk, Onur Bakiner provided an overview of the philosophical underpinnings, conceptual frames, and methodological choices informing the scholarship on truth commission impact to examine whether, how, how much, and why truth commissions influence policy, court decisions, and social norms. The findings of empirical scholarship range from partial confirmation of these bold and at times vague expectations to damning accounts of commissions’ failure to deliver.

What is more, scholars have set implicit and explicit standards for what coming to terms with the past truth a truth commission should mean: building liberal democratic institutions, transforming socioeconomic, gendered and racialized hierarchies, and reflecting local values, norms and power dynamics. Especially those studies that demand attentiveness to social justice and local justice have reported disappointment with truth commissions’ achievements.

Comments were provided by:

• Cath Collins, Professor of Transitional Justice at Ulster University and Director of the Observatorio de Justicia Transicional, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile

• Brandon Hamber, Professor at International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) and John Hume and Thomas P. O'Neill Chair in Peace, Ulster University.

Speaker profile

Onur Bakiner is Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle University, USA. His research and teaching interests include transitional justice, human rights, and judicial politics. His book Truth Commissions: Memory, Power, and Legitimacy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) investigates the role truth commissions play in contemporary societies, and was awarded the Best Book Award by the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association in 2017.

This is the recording of the launch of Dr Catherine O’Rourke’s new monograph, Women’s Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law(Cambridge University Press, 2020).

This event included comments from Catherine O'Rourke and Christine Bell, and featured a roundtable discussion chaired by Debora Kayembe with the following high-level experts from the fields of women's rights, conflict and international law:

• Madeleine Rees, Secretary-General of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

• Bandana Rana, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

• Adrian Johnson, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

• Vanessa Murphy, International Committee of the Red Cross

• Emily Kenney, UN Women

Hosted by the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University and the Political Settlements Research Programme at Edinburgh Law School.

Women’s Rights in Armed Conflict under International Law examines the protection of women’s rights in armed conflict under international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law and the United Nations Security Council. Through a series of case studies (DRC, Colombia, Nepal) and emblematic violations, the research identifies and proposes several opportunities to strengthen the legal status of specific protections to women’s rights; to improve how key institutions comply with and implement their own guarantees of women’s rights; to improve coordination amongst key institutions; and to maximise the strengths of different monitoring and enforcement procedures in order to enhance the overall protection of women’s rights in conflict under international law. A policy brief drawn from the book is also available.

In this seminar, Dr. Philipp Schulz talks about his recently launched book 'Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda' (University of California Press), based on his doctoral research conducted at the Transitional Justice Institute in Ulster University, Northern Ireland. Although wartime sexual violence against men occurs more frequently than is commonly assumed, its dynamics are remarkably underexplored, and male survivors’ experiences remain particularly overlooked. This reality is poignant in northern Uganda, where sexual violence against men during the early stages of the conflict was geographically widespread, yet now accounts of those incidents are not just silenced and neglected locally but also widely absent from analyses of the war. Based on rare empirical data, this book seeks to remedy this marginalization and to illuminate the seldom-heard voices of male sexual violence survivors in northern Uganda, bringing to light their experiences of gendered harms, agency, and justice.

'The Ugandan men who have survived male-perpetrated wartime rape have a lot to teach us - about constructing non-oppressive masculinities, creating mutual support, and building gender-aware sustainable peace. In his ethnographically nuanced study, Philipp Schulz also charts a more grounded approach to international justice.' - Cynthia Enloe, author of The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy

The book is available Open Access: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/97805203...​

The Irish Peace and Conflict Network, which includes the TJI, hosted this Panel discussion which explored what success and impact in relation to peace and conflict would look like for Ireland during Ireland's term on the Security Council. It explored the priorities for Security Council action in conflict-affected contexts, and what we can learn from past experiences of member states on the Council.

Sonja Hyland, Political Director of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade makes opening remarks, alongside:

Prof Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, University of Minnesota, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism;

Radhya Al-Mutawakel, Mwatana Organisation for Human Rights;

Louise Winstanley, ABColombia; and

Gustavo de Carvalho, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Africa.

Prof Siobhan Wills, Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University; Co-producer and co-director of Right Now I Want to Scream and It Stays With You, https://itstayswithyou.com;

Prof Monica McWilliams, Transitional Justice Institute Professor Emeritus, chaired the discussion.

On 18 February 2020, TJI hosted a workshop Deliberating Constitutional Futures on referendums.

The workshop explored the international and comparative dimensions of referendums and included sessions on the international, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish contexts.

On 18 November we launch the report from the workshop and are pleased that the commentators Andrée Murphy and Alex Kane are joining us for this event.

• The report is available read here

This seminar will reflect on the exclusion of women and gender from dominant approaches to dealing with the past in the north. It will discuss a specific intervention to remedy these absences and silences, namely the development of Gender Principles for Dealing with the Legacy of the Past by a network of women drawn from academia, the human rights and victims sectors. The seminar will further reflect on the opportunity to address gender more broadly in any process to deal with the past, in particular the inclusion of LGBTQ experiences and perspectives. The seminar reflects on some of the reasons why these perspectives have been so absent from the primary debate, and considers possible strategies and approaches for devising a more gender-inclusive process.

Presenters

Claire Hackett, Healing Through Remembering & Falls Community Council

Catherine O'Rourke, Director, Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University

The Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and INCORE, in partnership with Healing Through Remembering and the John Hume and Thomas P. O'Neill Chair in Peace, invite you to the online seminar series "Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland"

In this Ulster University Public Lecture, Prof Aoife Nolan discusses the role of courts in considering the rights of children and future generations in the context of the urgent global challenge presented by climate change. Children and future generations will bear the burden of environmental decisions made today. However, these non-voting groups cannot input effectively into decision-making around the environment. This lecture analyses the role that courts should adopt with regard to enforcing the constitutional rights of children and future generations in environmental protection cases. Responding to this ever-more prominent theme in child and youth-focused and driven environmental advocacy and litigation, the lecture focuses on how these groups' position ‘outside democracy’ can and should shape the courts' role when deciding whether to impose constitutional constraints on democratic decision-making in the environmental protection context. Aoife Nolan is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Co-Director of the Human Rights Law Centre at the University of Nottingham and Visiting Professor at Ulster University. Professor Nolan’s professional experience in human rights and constitutional law straddles the legal, policy, practitioner and academic fields. She is Vice-President of the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, which she joined in 2017. She has published extensively in the areas of human rights and constitutional law, particularly in relation to children's rights and economic and social rights. She currently leads a major three-year international research project on ‘Advancing Child Rights Strategic Litigation’. Professor Nolan has acted as an expert advisor to a wide range of international and national organisations and bodies working on human rights issues, including numerous UN Special Procedures, UN treaty bodies, the Council of Europe, multiple NHRIs and NGOs. She has held visiting positions at academic institutions in Europe, Africa, the US and Australia. She is an Academic Expert member at Doughty Street Chambers where she co-leads the Children’s Rights Group. Her recent work has focused on climate justice and the rights of children and future generations. In January 2021, she was invited to join the advisory board to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on its forthcoming General Comment No.26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change. This event was hosted by the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, School of Law and Transitional Justice Institute. The event was held in the Conor Lecture Theatre, Birley Building, Ulster University, York Street, Belfast, BT15 1ED, 10th November 2023. Prof Siobhán Wills (TJI Director) chaired the lecture.

This seminar was held on 5 June 2020, as part of the TJI/INCORE/Healing Through Remembering online seminar series "Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: Deepening the Debate". The seminar looks into a number of initiatives and measures aimed at protecting military service personnel from investigation and prosecution currently being considered by the UK, including a Statute of Limitations, derogating from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in future armed conflicts; amending the Human Rights Act, and restricting UK courts' ability to adjudicate civil claims originating from conflicts abroad. The presenter argues these measures, if implemented, are problematic from a human rights and rule of perspective and undermines the UK's role as a strong defender of human rights in the global arena and a champion of the international rule of law; create additional challenges for upholding accountability standards around the world and, in the longer run, undermine the legitimacy and efficiency of normative and institutional frameworks that seek to advance accountability norms.

Presenter: Dr Thomas Hansen, Lecturer in Law, Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University

For full information on the seminar series, see https://www.ulster.ac.uk/faculties/arts-humanities-and-social-sciences/law/updates/events/dealing-with-the-past-in-northern-ireland.

Prof Siobhan O'Neill, Professor of Mental Health Sciences, Ulster University discusses the “The need for a trauma informed approach to address the conflict's legacy”, in this seminar held on Monday, 18 May 2020. The seminar belongs to the TJI/INCORE/Healing Through Remembering Online Seminar Series on Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: Deepening the Debate exploring the Stormont House Agreement and dealing with the past in Northern Ireland. Further seminar series details are here: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/faculties/arts-humanities-and-social-sciences/law/updates/events/dealing-with-the-past-in-northern-ireland.

This seminar was delivered by Dr Adrian Grant on 7 May 2020, as part of the TJI/INCORE/Healing Through Remembering Online Seminar Series on Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: Deepening the Debate exploring the Stormont House Agreement and dealing with the past in Northern Ireland. Further seminar series details can be viewed at https://www.ulster.ac.uk/faculties/arts-humanities-and-social-sciences/law/updates/events/dealing-with-the-past-in-northern-ireland.

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security contains more than a dozen mentions of young people; to be precise, it refers twice to “women and children” and thirteen times to “women and girls.” Since the resolution’s adoption twenty years ago, many initiatives have arisen to combat conflict-related harms to children. These include the Children and Armed Conflict Agenda launched by Security Council Resolution 1612 (2005), the Policy on Children of the International Criminal Court Prosecutor (2016), and other inter- and non-governmental efforts. This seminar will evaluate the WPS resolution, twenty years on, as a child-rights instrument. Consideration of the interim initiatives will help frame that assessment, as will evolving understandings of children’s sexual and gender identities, of children’s agency and children’s autonomy – all factors that may counsel against too-quick conjoinments of “children,” or “girls,” with “women.”

Diane Marie Amann is Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law. She is also Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict.

This event is part of the WPS@20 seminar hosted by the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security by the United Nations Security Council.

A roundtable of feminist activists in Belfast reflecting on the local significance of the WPS agenda. The roundtable features Andrée Murphy from Relatives for Justice, Sophie Long from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and Bronagh Hinds, Independent Consultant. The roundtable belongs to the WPS@20 seminar series hosted by Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute to mark the 20th anniversary of the UN Security Council's adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Learn more about the seminar series at www.ulster.ac.uk/wps20.

Professor Christine Bell, University of Edinburgh, WPS and Peace Agreements, April 29, 2020, 12.30-2.00pm. In this seminar, Professor Bell reflects on the significance of the WPS Agenda at the UN Security Council for peace agreement practice. Drawing on the unique PAX Peace Agreement database (peaceagreements.org), containing 1600+ peace agreements signed since 1990, the seminar tracks the evolution and impact of the WPS Agenda. The seminar belongs to the WPS@20 seminar series hosted by Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute to mark the 20th anniversary of the UN Security Council's adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Learn more about the seminar series at www.ulster.ac.uk/wps20.

The WPS agenda, as defined by the UN Security Council, has latterly addressed itself more directly to the question of 'engaging men and boys'. This seminar will reflect on this development and its significance.

Professor Brandon Hamber is one of the world’s leading scholars on peace and conflict. He is the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace at Ulster University based at the International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) and also within the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI). His scholarship on gender, conflict and transitional justice has been to the forefront of efforts to integrate masculinities analysis into WPS and related themes.

This event is part of the WPS@20 seminar hosted by the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security by the United Nations Security Council. Learn more at www.ulster.ac.uk/wps20.

This seminar examines the new prominence of women mediators within the WPS agenda, reflecting on reasons for its prominence, and challenges towards integrating WPS and conflict mediation.

Dr Catherine Turner is Associate Professor of International Law at Durham University, UK. She is the Deputy Director of the Durham Global Security Institute, where her areas of research and teaching expertise include international law, peace mediation, transitional justice and women in mediation.

This seminar was held on February 28, 2020 as part of the WPS@20 seminar series hosted by the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security by the United Nations Security Council. Learn more about the Transitional Justice Institute at www.transitionaljustice.ulster.ac.uk.

As attention to conflict-related violence against women has grown in recent years, the need to ensure response to the realities of that violence beyond narrowly confined ideas of ‘rape as a weapon of war’ has become more and more evident. In her new book, ‘Conflict-Related Violence Against Women: Transforming Transition,’ Aisling Swaine examines the contexts of Liberia, Northern Ireland and Timor-Leste to identify a spectrum of forms of gender violence. She analyses their occurrence, and the relationship between them, within and across different points of pre-, mid- and post-conflict. Swaine proposes that a transformation rather than a transition is required in the aftermath of conflict, if justice is to play a role in preventing gender violence. In her talk, Swaine will provide an overview of current approaches to understanding conflict-related violence against women and will comment on the relevance of these to the future of the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

Dr Aisling Swaine is Associate Professor of Gender and Security at the Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science. She is author of Conflict-related Violence Against Women: Transforming Transitions (Cambridge University Press, 2018) which is based on the doctoral research she conducted at Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute.

This seminar was delivered on February 26, 2020 as part of the WPS@20 seminar hosted by the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security by the United Nations Security Council. Learn more about the series at www.ulster.ac.uk/wps20.

UNSCR1325 was the first UN Security Council resolution to draw attention to women and girls during conflict, as well as the first to consider gendered experiences of war. Yet those vulnerable to insecurity and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity remain largely neglected by the international peace and security community. While much has been accomplished by WPS projects, there is an alarming lack of attention to how homophobic and transphobic violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals occurs in conflict-related environments. The seminar will reflect on these silences and their implications, as well as discuss practical proposals for including sexual orientation and gender identity in WPS work.

Dr Jamie Hagen is Lecturer in International Relations, QUB and Co-Director of the QUB Centre for Gender in Politics. Dr Hagen researches LGBTQ inclusion in Women, Peace and Security practices, as well as queer analysis of security studies more broadly.

This seminar was held on February 12, 2020 as part of the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute WPS@20 seminar series to mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption the Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security by the United Nations Security Council. Learn more about the series at www.ulster.ac.uk/wps20.

The Transitional Justice Institute is pleased to host this seminar in association with the QUB Centre for Gender in Politics.

We are pleased to share this recording of a conversation on the future of the European Social Charter (ESC), the main instrument protecting social rights within the Council of Europe, as well as on its relationship to the European Union.The conversation, organised by ANESC (UK and Ireland) featured two interventions. A first intervention by Prof Aoife Nolan discussed the achievements of the European Social Charter and of its monitoring body (the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR)), as well as the challenges ahead, with a particular emphasis on the Collective Complaints Mechanism which allows NGOs and unions to address situations of non-conformity to the ECSR, and on the role of civil society in the reporting mechanism of the Charter. A second intervention by Prof Olivier De Schutter explored the relationship of the ESC to the EU. While the EU has adopted the Charter of Fundamental Rights (including a set of social rights and principles) that is binding on the EU institutions and on the EU Member States in the implementation of EU law, and while the EU institutions have endorsed the European Pillar of Social Rights, the relationship of these instruments to the Council of Europe’s Social Charter and, more generally, the role of the ESC in law - and policy-making in the EU remain debated. This event, the European Social Charter at Sixty: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects for the Protection of Social Rights in Europe took place at 10-12 am. Irish Time (CET) - 10th May 2022, chaired by Ms Eleanor Sharpston, a former Advocate General to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Human Rights Violations in the context of Militarised Policing in Brazil: The Right to Mental Health June 21st 2022 Parallel event to the UN Human Rights Council, organised by the Maranhense Human Rights Society (SMDH), Ulster University (Northern Ireland), and Goiás State University (Brazil). The speakers include three mothers whose children were killed by police and who are now campaigning for an end to racist police violence in Brazil and for justice for the families of victims. Attendees who sign up to the event were sent a link to the film “It Marked My Life a Lot” (Brazil/UK 2020, 40 minutes) available here https://vimeo.com/720832298 prior to event. The film was produced in collaboration with mothers, teachers, and human rights defenders in Rio's favelas. We also hear from the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, and former UN Special Rapporteurs Dainius Puras and Cristof Heyns. Speakers at the Event: Vanessa Francisco Sales, human rights defender from the Alemão complex of favelas, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and mother of Agatha Sales killed by police in 2019 Bruna da Silva, human rights defender from the Maré complex of favelas, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and mother of Marcus Vinicius killed by police in 2018. Ana Paula Oliveira, one of the leaders of the movement Mothers of Manguinhos, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and mother of Johnatha killed by police in 2014. Siobhán Wills, the Director of the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University, Northern Ireland, and co-director of the film It Marked My Life a Lot. Diogo Diniz Ribeiro Cabral, human rights defender and lawyer for the Bom Acerto community in Balsas city, Maranhão, Brazil. Luiz Eduardo Lopes Silva, Professor of History at the Federal University of Maranhão and member of Maranhense Human Rights Society (SMDH) and the Network of Security Observatories, Brazil. Moderator: Ulisses Terto Neto, law professor at Goiás State University (Brazil) and research assistant at Ulster University (Northern Ireland).

Ulster University hosted this webinar with Prof. Alison Brysk on Reproductive Rights at Risk: Gender, Religion and Nationalism in Europe and the Americas. About this event After decades of a "rising tide" of liberal modernization, abortion rights are regressing in many societies shaped by nationalism - even as their religious peers continue to legalize. We will explore the social patterns and political process of the struggle for reproductive rights in Europe and the Americas: Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Brazil and the US. As the US faces the prospect of the loss of national judicial protection for the right to abortion under Roe vs. Wade, how can the lessons of human rights scholarship and comparative experience inform reproductive rights advocacy and mobilization? Biography Alison Brysk, Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance in the Department of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is currently Fulbright-Oxford-Pembroke Visiting Professor in Politics and International Relations. Alison is an American political scientist who has authored seven books and edited ten books on international human rights and has been a scholar and lecturer in Argentina, Australia, Ecuador, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Japan. She has also held Fulbright Fellowships in India and Canada and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on human rights, international relations, civil society, and Latin American politics. TJI Director Prof Siobhán Wills chaired this event.

This event, organised by the Gender, Justice and Security Hub, Ulster University and Queen's University of Belfast, explored the current challenges of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, including women's exclusion from high level negotiations. This event explored these challenges, including women’s exclusion from high level negotiations around war and peace, though a conversation between three senior women academics and activists with decades of experience in law, politics and the prevention of violence. Professor Christine Chinkin is the former Director of the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security, a Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan and a member of the Bar of England and Wales and Matrix Chambers. Professor Monica McWilliams is Emeritus Professor at Ulster University’s Transitional Justice Institute and was the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. Mossarat Qadim is internationally known expert on de-radicalisation, preventing violent extremism (PVE). Chair: Professor Rory O’Connell is Professor of Human Rights and Constitutional Law and Research Director (Law) at Ulster University, Northern Ireland. From 2014-2020 he was the Director of the Transitional Justice Institute.

Join the mother of the girl Ágatha, directors of Agora Eu Quero Gritar and representatives of the OAB-RJ and State Council for Human Rights. Event language: Portuguese (Brazil). The directors of the documentary Agora Eu Quero Gritar (Right Now I Want to Scream, Brazil/Undo Kingdom, 2020), Cahal McLaughlin and Siobhán Wills, invite you to a free webinar with: Rodrigo Mondego, attorney for the Human Rights Commission of the OAB-RJ and vice-president of the State Council for the Defense of Human Rights in Rio de Janeiro; Aderson Bussinger, director of the Documentation and Research Center at OAB-RJ – supporter of this event; Vanessa Sales, mother of girl Ágatha Vitória, killed by police in Rio de Janeiro. More about the documentary here ⤵ http://itstayswithyou.com/rio/

TJI was delighted to host this book launch of 'The Law and Practice of Peacekeeping', co-authored by TJI Director Prof Siobhan Wills, Prof Rosa Freedman and Dr Nicholas Lemay-Hebert.

This book presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the controversial UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. The legacy of this mission includes sexual scandals, the excessive use of force and a cholera outbreak. Prof Nigel White (Nottingham) acts as a discussant for this book launching, and Prof Rory O'Connell is the chair.

More information about the event in the following link: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/transitional-justice-institute/events/book-launch-the-law-and-practice-of-peacekeeping?fbclid=IwAR3UKXc4fmDZyjaxR26p2MXgorUcpCVSROeC9G6mKuolywi4RKGx_fwPQ

Event from the 5th of April 2022