Time: 5:30 pm
Location: International Lounge, Usdan
Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Permanent Representative of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations, will deliver a Distinguished Lecture in International Justice and Human Rights. He will reflect on the development of international criminal justice since Nuremberg and the seeming challenge faced by tribunals in leading those convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes to acknowledge and repent of their crimes. The event will be moderated by Donald Ferencz of the Planethood Foundation, which has generously funded the Distinguished Lecture.
Prince Zeid is Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a post he held previously for six and a half years from 2000-2007. From 2007-2010 he was Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States of America. He also served as Jordan’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN, with the rank of Ambassador, from 1996-2000. Prince Zeid holds a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.
In early 2009, Prince Zeid was asked by the President of the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court to chair the closing stages of the negotiations to the “Crime of Aggression” — identified by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg as the “supreme international crime” – specifically with respect to its definition and the conditions for the Court’s exercise of jurisdiction over it, all necessary for the crime to become operational under the Rome Statute. Under the President’s leadership and guidance, those negotiations were brought to a successful conclusion and by consensus in Kampala, Uganda, in June 2010. Most recently, from March through to October 2011, Prince Zeid coordinated the search committee for the selection of the next prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. And also from 16 September 2010 to 7 March 2012 he was the Chairman of the “Country-Specific Configuration for Liberia” — the committee within the framework of the UN Peace Building Commission responsible for overseeing the transition from peacekeeping to the consolidation of peace in Liberia. He was also a member of the World Bank’s Advisory Council for the World Development Report 2011. He is married to Princess Sarah Zeid, and they have a son and two daughters.
This event is cosponsored by the Legal Studies, International & Global Studies and Peace, Conflict & Coexistence Departments, and the Heller School’s Coexistence and Conflict Program.