Expert Roundtable: The Rohingya Genocide
Event Description
As the Biden Administration takes office, the crimes committed against the Rohingya may once more become a focus for American policymaking. On Friday, January 29 from 12-1 pm EST, PILPG and Orrick hosted an expert roundtable on the topic of the Rohingya Crisis and the legal basis to conclude that the Rohingya were the victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Our esteemed panelists included Rohingya social justice activist Yasmin Ullah and PILPG Senior Peace Fellows with deep expertise in the region, including several contributors to PILPG’s landmark 2018 report, Documenting Atrocity Crimes Committed Against the Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine State.
PILPG Managing Directors Professor Milena Sterio and Dean Michael Scharf, Senior Legal Advisor Dr. Gregory Noone, Senior Peace Fellows Drew Mann and Sandra Hodgkinson, and Yasmin Ullah all shared their experiences with these efforts.
This Expert Roundtable was held in partnership with Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, a global law firm. We are grateful for their enduring support for our mission of lawyering peace.
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
Dean Michael Scharf
Dean Michael Scharf is a Co-Founder of PILPG. Scharf is also Co-Dean and Joseph C. Hostetler – Baker & Hostetler Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Scharf has led USAID-funded transitional justice projects in Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, and Turkey (for Syria), and maritime piracy projects in Kenya, Mauritius, and The Seychelles. During a sabbatical in 2008, Scharf served as Special Assistant to the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal and during the elder Bush and Clinton Administrations, he served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs, and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. A graduate of Duke University School of Law (Order of the Coif and High Honors), and judicial clerk to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat on the Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, Scharf is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and 19 books, three of which have won national book of the year honors. A past recipient of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law Alumni Association's "Distinguished Teacher Award" and Ohio Magazine's "Excellence in Education Award," Scharf continues to teach International Law and was ranked as among the most cited authors in the field since 2010 by the 2016 and 2019 Sisk/Leiter studies. Since 2013, Scharf has been the producer and host of "Talking Foreign Policy," a radio program broadcast on WCPN 90.3 FM and other NPR affiliates across the country.
Yasmin Ullah
Yasmin Ullah is a Rohingya social justice activist born in Northern Rakhine state of Myanmar. She fled to Thailand in 1995 along with parents and remained a refugee in Thailand until 2011. She formerly served as the president of the Rohingya Human Rights Network, a non-profit group led by activists across Canada in advocacy and raising public awareness of the Rohingya genocide.
Yasmin has continued to engage with the Rohingya issues through an intersectional lense locally in Canada and internationally. She has worked on various projects such as the Time to Act: Rohingya Voices exhibition with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the Genocide Learning Tool with the Montréal Holocaust Museum and the Anthology: I Am A Rohingya where she published her poetry along with other Rohingya poets from around the world. She's currently completing her undergraduate degree in political science
Drew Mann
Andrew C. Mann is a Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG. Mann orchestrated PILPG’s Documenting Atrocity Crimes Committed Against the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State project. Mann is a retired U.S. Senior Foreign Service Officer who was the Special Assistant to Supervisor for Brčko District Ambassador Henry L. Clarke. Mann served as chargé d’affaires in Sri Lanka. He also served in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on temporary assignment in Darfur, Sudan. From 1994 to 1996, he was an Expert-on-Mission to the Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Mann taught human rights at the University of Washington, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies as a State Department Pearson Fellow and served as Chair for Diplomatic Studies at the U.S. Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth
Dr. Gregory P. Noone
Dr. Gregory P. Noone, Ph.D., J.D., is a Senior Peace Fellow and Senior Legal Advisor for PILPG. Dr. Noone currently leads the Yemen track- two diplomacy team and serves as the Senior Legal Advisor for the Human Rights Documentation Solutions project. Dr. Noone has conducted PILPG justice system assessments in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire as well as provided transitional justice assistance in post-Gaddafi Libya and to the Syrian opposition. Dr. Noone was also part of the international effort investigating the Myanmar government’s atrocities committed against their Rohingya population. He worked as an investigator in the refugee camps in Bangladesh and as one of the legal experts on the report’s findings. Dr. Noone also worked as a Senior Program Officer for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent, nonpartisan federal institution created by the U.S. Congress to promote research, education, and training on the prevention, management and peaceful resolution of international conflicts. While at USIP, Noone received a Special Act Award for his work in Afghanistan. Dr. Noone is a Captain in the United States Navy and has served as the Commanding Officer of the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) reserve unit and as the Commanding Officer of the Navy JAG International and Operational Law reserve unit as well as the Director of the Department of Defense’s Periodic Review Secretariat (PRS). Dr. Noone previously served on active duty as a judge advocate in the U.S. Navy. He held various positions in the Navy including the Head of the International Law Branch and the Foreign Military Rights Affairs Branch in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) International and Operational Law Division at the Pentagon. Dr. Noone also served at the DIILS, where he trained senior military, governmental and non-governmental civilian personnel in the Law of Armed Conflict, Human Rights and other international law topics, in over sixty countries (and has been to 95 countries). Most notably, he has trained members of the Iraqi National Congress, the post- genocide government in Rwanda, the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, civil society in the Sudan, and senior members of the Russian government. Dr. Noone is the co-author (with Laurie R. Blank) of the widely used textbook: International Law and Armed Conflict: Fundamental Principles and Contemporary Challenges in the Law of War Second Edition (Aspen / Wolters Kluwer Publishing 2019).
Sandra Hodgkinson
Sandra Hodgkinson, J.D., is a Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG. Hodgkinson was a member of the legal experts’ team for PILPG’s Rohingya Report and previously worked PILPG in Côte d’Ivoire and the Seychelles. She is also the Senior Vice President for Strategy and Corporate Development at Leonardo DRS. Hodgkinson previously served as a civil servant in the U.S. Government achieving the rank of Senior Executive Service (SES), with assignments at Department of Defense, State Department, and the White House. Her positions included: Special Assistant (Chief of Staff) to the Deputy Secretary of Defense; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD); Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the National Defense University; Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues; Director for International Justice at the National Security Council (NSC); and Senior Advisor at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), in Baghdad, Iraq. She has been awarded DoD’s highest career civilian award, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award, DoD’s Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal (military service), and 4 State Department Superior Honor Awards. Hodgkinson is a retired Captain from the U.S. Navy JAG Corps reserve, and has been teaching National Security Law at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law since 2007.