Expert Roundtable: Insider’s View of Human Rights Documentation
Event Description
On Friday, February 26 from 12-1 pm EST, PILPG hosted an expert roundtable on human rights documentation. Our panelists provided insight into the process of human rights documentation by sharing personal experiences with conducting documentation and discussing the main principle and challenges of conducting investigations.
This event is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.
Moderator
Professor Milena Sterio
Milena Sterio, the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Co-Coordinator for Global Criminal Justice Partnerships at the PILPG is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio is one of six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog, and a frequent contributor to the blog focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. While in Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to the province of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. Sterio has also assisted piracy prosecutions in Mauritius, Kenya and the Seychelles Islands. Sterio is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book, “The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law,” (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.
Speakers
Pratima T. Narayan
Pratima T. Narayan serves as Co-Chair of WCAPS Human Rights Working Group. She is a Senior Program Manager with the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation where she oversees several programs in transitional justice and atrocity prevention, including the Bangladesh-Rohingya Documentation Initiative. Pratima co-administers the Christine Loudes ATLAS Mentorship Programme for women in public international law and is a member of the Justice Rapid Response Expert Roster, the American Society of International Law and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Prior to this, Pratima led investigations for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan. While living in Juba from 2017 to 2020, she conducted approximately 25 missions across South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia to document grave human rights violations. In 2018, she was one of eighteen investigators selected globally to participate in a U.S. Department of State investigation into atrocities allegedly committed against Rohingya communities in Myanmar. Pratima has also held various positions with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization International Bureau of Education in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to working as an attorney with corporate law firms in New York, Pratima has successfully counseled internally displaced persons and asylum-seekers in Greek migrant camps, South Africa and Japan. A Bronx native, she began her career representing families in eviction prevention cases with the Legal Aid Society in 2002.
Pratima holds a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. She also earned a postgraduate diploma in Education from the Open University of Tanzania. Pratima is admitted to practice law in New York State and speaks English, Spanish and French.
Kyle Wood
Kyle Wood is an Assistant Attorney General in the Washington State Attorney General's Office where he leads Attorney General Bob Ferguson's efforts to end human trafficking in Washington. In 2018, he participated as an investigator in PILPG's investigation into allegations of atrocities committed against the Rohingya, part of a team that interviewed more than 1,000 Rohingya refugees living in camps near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. Between 2005 and 2015, Mr. Wood was a trial and appellate prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands, where he litigated crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of war and Grave Breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. He also serves as an international election observer, and represents, pro bono, indigent asylum-seekers in proceedings before U.S. immigration courts.
Camille McDorman
Camille McDorman is an attorney in Seattle, Washington and currently works with Native American crime survivors as a civil legal aid attorney at Northwest Justice Project. She is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law and is a William H. Gates Public Service Law Scholar. She was an investigator with PILPG’s human rights documentation investigation mission in the Rohingya refugee camps and settlement areas in Eastern Bangladesh. Prior to her legal career, she managed education programs in Rakhine State, Yangon, and on the Thai-Myanmar border.
Saadia Aleem
Saadia Aleem has extensive experience researching, monitoring, and documenting human rights and protection concerns in conflict settings.
Saadia is now serving as the South Sudan Protection Cluster Analysis and Monitoring Advisor where she provides regular analysis on emerging concerns affecting the protection of civilians. Her previous work experience includes establishing new protection monitoring mechanisms for the Syria Cross-Border response. She was a human rights officer with UNMISS where she documented and reported on human rights violations, including conflict-related sexual violence, child recruitment targeted killings of minority groups, and ethnic-based forced population movements. Her other projects have included investigating war crimes against the Rohingya, analyzing accountability mechanisms for extra-judicial killings in India, and providing legal services to refugees in Thailand. Prior to moving abroad, Saadia was an appellate litigator in New York focusing on immigration and criminal justice issues. She is a graduate of NYU School of Law, where she was a recipient of the prestigious Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholarship.
Professor Jae-Chun Won
Professor of International Law and Director of Handong International Law Centre, Handong Global University, Pohang, Korea
Professor Won began his legal career as an international law officer at the Office of General Counsel, Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea. After completing law studies at Brooklyn Law School (USA), he entered public prosecution service at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, New York, U.S.A. as an Assistant District Attorney.
In 2001, Professor Won joined Handong International Law School, an American J.D. style graduate law school, as a founding Associate Dean. In 2009, he took a leave from academia to serve the National Human Rights Commission of Korea as Director-General (DG) in charge of Human Rights Policy, Human Rights Education, and International Human Rights Affairs.
In 2013, Professor Won became a founding Director of the Handong Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (HIPR) and currently serves as Director of the Handong International Law Centre.
Professor Won is a board member and the editor of the “Korean Yearbook of International Law,” a publication of the Korea Branch of International Law Association. He is a full member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law of Sanremo, Italy, and also serves as an International Humanitarian Law Advisory Board Member of the Korea Red Cross.
License: Bar Admission in State of New Year and State of New Jersey, U.S.A.
Completed: ICRC IHL Course for Humanitarian Practitioners and Police Maker, 2019, Geneva
Served: Korea IHL Moot Court Final Round Judge
Member: International Association of Prosecutors (IAP)
Stephanie Munro Courtney
Stephanie Munro Courtney was the logistics coordinator for the PILPG Rohingya project. At the time, she was a PILPG intern working on the Rohingya team and preparing the informational report for investigators to review upon arrival in Bangladesh. A few weeks later, she landed in Bangladesh herself, tasked with recruiting interpreters, securing necessary equipment, and ensuring the team had what they needed each day to go into the field (sometimes that meant finding peanut butter!).
Stephanie graduated law school in 2018 and now works for a firm in California. She also does pro bono work for an international non-profit, but dreams of one day becoming a fully fledged field investigator. On the ground, she took the lead in organizing and training interpreters and stays in regular contact with the team of interpreters in Bangladesh.
Larissa Wakim
Larissa Wakim is a member of the New Zealand Immigration and Protection Tribunal. She is a former Investigator and Deputy Team Leader for the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor, as well as a former Visiting Research Scholar at The University of Michigan Law School. Ms. Wakim was an investigator on the PILPG Rohingya Investigation Mission.