Expert Roundtable:

International Criminal Court 21st Session of the Assembly of States Parties: Key Takeaways from the PILPG Team

Event Description

Join PILPG on January 12 from 12 pm to 1 pm EDT for a conversation with experts regarding the key takeaways from the 21st Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court and the Court’s recent developments.

The Assembly of States Parties functions as the management oversight and legislative body of the ICC. It is composed of representatives of States Parties that have ratified or acceded to the Rome Statute. Currently, it is has 123 ICC states parties.

The 21st session of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) has just concluded in the Hague, the Netherlands, from December 5 to December 10. As always, PILPG had its own delegation attending the ASP and following the discussion held during plenaries and side events. During this roundtable event, our PILPG team members will be sharing their key takeaways from the ASP and discuss the recent developments from the ICC. The event will be moderated by PILPG Managing Director Professor Milena Sterio.

This 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.

You can also read PILPG's reports from the 21st session of the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court on our Lawyering Justice blog: https://www.publicinternationallawandpolicygroup.org/blog

event recording

Speakers

**Margaret deGuzman**

Margaret M. deGuzman is a James E. Beasley Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Institute for International Law and Public Policy at Temple Law School, and a judge of the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. She specializes in criminal law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and transitional justice. She also teaches a course on mindful lawyering. Her scholarship examines the role of international criminal law in the global legal order, with a particular focus on the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Professor deGuzman’s publications include *Shocking the Conscience of Humanity: Gravity and the Legitimacy of International Criminal Law* (Oxford University Press 2020), *The Elgar Companion to the International Criminal Court* (with Valerie Oosterveld eds., Edward Elgar Publishing 2020), and *Arcs of Global Justice: Essays in Honour of William A. Schabas* (with Diane Marie Amann eds., Oxford University Press 2018). Her work has appeared in numerous other books and journals, including the *Journal of Criminal Law and Philosophy*, *Virginia Journal of International Law*, and *Yale Journal of International Law*. Professor deGuzman is a Senior Peace Fellow at the Public International Law and Policy Group, a consultant with Global Rights Compliance, and serves on the editorial board of the African Journal of International Criminal Justice.
Before joining the Temple Law faculty, Professor deGuzman clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law in San Francisco, specializing in criminal defense. She served as a legal advisor to the Senegal delegation at the Rome Conference on the ICC and as a law clerk in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Darou Ndiar, Senegal.

**Yvonne Dutton**

Dr. Yvonne Dutton is a Senior Legal Advisor at PILPG. She is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law teaching evidence, criminal law, criminal procedure, international criminal law, international law, and comparative law. Professor Dutton graduated from Columbia Law School, where she served on the Columbia Law Review and was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar (all years). She also holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. After graduating from Columbia Law School, Professor Dutton clerked for the Honorable William C. Conner, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Professor Dutton has practiced law as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she tried narcotics trafficking and organized crime cases. She also practiced as a civil litigator in law firms in New York and California. Professor Dutton’s research interests include international criminal law, international human rights law, and maritime piracy. Broadly speaking, her scholarship examines questions about international cooperation and the role and effectiveness of international institutions in deterring and holding accountable those who commit crimes of international concern. In May 2013, her book entitled Rules, Politics, and the International Criminal Court: Committing to the Court was published by Routledge. Professor Dutton has recently been involved with providing technical assistance with the development of framework laws on transitional justice and the harmonization of Ukrainian domestic law with international humanitarian law and the drafting of a legal charter for the Ukrainian peacebuilding/documentation center.

**Kate Gibson**
Kate Gibson is a PILPG Senior Peace Fellow and Senior Legal Advisor. She has been representing accused before the international criminal courts and tribunals since 2005, including as Co-Counsel of Jean-Pierre Bemba and Bosco Ntaganda before the ICC, Co-Counsel of Charles Taylor before the SCSL, and Co-Counsel of Radovan Karadžić before the IRMCT. At the ICTR, she was Lead Counsel of Justin Mugenzi and Co-Counsel of Jean-Baptiste Gatete. Currently, Kate is the Lead Counsel of Paul Rusesabagina, detained in Rwanda, and is part of the legal team of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi before the KSC. She also represents a group of Rohingya victims in the Myanmar/Bangladesh pre-trial proceedings before the ICC, and is Lead Counsel of Prosper Mugiraneza, detained Niger, before the IRMCT. Kate is an Associate Tenant of Doughty Street Chambers, holds an LL.M in International Law from Cambridge University.

MODERATOR

Milena Sterio is the Managing Director of PILPG and the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio leads PILPG’s Thought Leadership Initiative.

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.