Last year, Maynooth University’s School of Law and Criminology and the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy in SOAS held a joint online joint conference on the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). The conference included presentations from scholars in a range of disciplines, including law, history, international relations and political science.
The UNWCC, which operated from 1943-48, was a UN agency that supported localised prosecutions of international crimes committed during the Second World War. The Commission was composed of representatives from 16 Allied States and through its work war crimes and crimes against humanity were prosecuted in tribunals located in Europe and the Far East. Over the course of its lifetime, more than 2000 trials took place. The work of the UNWCC gives an insight into substantive and procedural international criminal law in the post war period. Since 2017, the UNWCC Archives have been made available to the public online.
The conference included a keynote panel by leading experts on the UNWCC: Dr Julia Eichenberg (Senior lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of Bayreuth), Dr Mark Ellis (Executive Director, International Bar Association), Prof. Dan Plesch, Dr Ann-Sophie Schoepfel (Historian in Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich and Professor, Science Po Paris/ Nancy).
In addition, there was a penal discussion panel discussion on ‘Universal Jurisdiction: Lessons from the past and current application’ chaired by Lennart Poulsen (Barrister, Chambers of Steven Kay QC, 9 Bedford Row) with experts: Prof. Olympia Bekou (Professor of Public International Law and Head of School, School of Law, University of Nottingham), Tatyana Eatwell (Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers) and Marie O’Leary (Counsel for the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence at the International Criminal Court).
The recordings of the conference are now available online here.
The conference materials are available here.
This virtual conference was organised by Dr Amina Adanan (MU School of Law and Criminology Maynooth University) and Prof. Dan Plesch of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy in SOAS in University College London. This project was funded by the Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Grant.