Working Session:

Communicating about Transitional Justice to Advance a Culture of Change

Event Description

Join the Public International Law & Policy Group, Fondation Hirondelle, and the International Center for Transitional Justice on Thursday, June 2 at 10:30 am CET for a working session on the importance of communicating about transitional justice in facilitating a culture of change within societies that have experienced massive human rights violations. Using comparative examples, topics to be addressed will include: 1) the role of media in supporting sustainable transitional justice processes, the different stages in which media plays a crucial role, and the importance of training media actors to communicate with the public on transitional justice as a catalyst for sustainable peace; 2) the work of journalists covering current transitional justice issues, such as Ukraine, Colombia, colonial crimes, and environmental crimes, that highlight the value of specialized and independent reporters and the challenges of bringing transitional justice expertise to a larger audience to explain both the political relevance and technical nature of the issues; and 3) art as a means of engaging youth in Tunisia and Lebanon, including through art and photo contests as well as oral history projects, intergenerational dialogue, and workshops on collecting testimonies.

This event is held as part of the World Justice Project’s World Justice Forum 2022.

Event Registration

About World Justice Forum 2022

The global pandemic has underscored the high costs of neglecting just, open, and accountable governance for all. If communities are to achieve a just recovery, withstand the next shock, and achieve global Sustainable Development Goals that “leave no one behind,” they must strengthen the rule of law.

Please join the World Justice Project, its partners, and hundreds of rule of law changemakers around the globe at World Justice Forum 2022: Building More Just Communities. Attendees can participate in person in The Hague, Netherlands -- or virtually – from May 30 to June 3.

Dozens of working sessions will invite interactive agenda-setting across the Forum’s three themes: (1) Access to Justice, (2) Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination, and (3) Open Government and Anti-Corruption. Join leaders and experts from the realms of government, business, civil society and research at the premier international event for the rule of law. Register now.

The World Justice Forum 2022 will feature 37 working sessions that reflect the Forum’s three themes: Access to Justice, Anti-Corruption and Open Government, and Equal Rights and Non-Discrimination.

Working Session organizers

Fondation Hirondelle is a Swiss non-profit organization which provides information to populations faced with crisis, empowering them in their daily lives and as citizens. Founded in 1995 and based in Lausanne, Fondation Hirondelle currently implements media programmes in 8 countries in Africa and Asia.

International Center for Transitional Justice is a non-profit organization dedicated to pursuing accountability for mass atrocity and human rights abuse through transitional justice mechanisms. ICTJ works side by side with victims to obtain acknowledgment and redress for massive human rights violations, hold those responsible to account, reform and build democratic institutions, and prevent the recurrence of violence or repression.

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.

Speakers

**Thierry Cruvellier**

Thierry Cruvellier, journalist and author, is the editor of JusticeInfo.net, the leading news website on transitional justice. For twenty-five years, he has been covering war crimes trials before international tribunals for Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, and Cambodia, as well as national justice efforts in Colombia, the Balkans or the trial of Hissène Habré before the Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal. Cruvellier covered the war in Sierra Leone between 1990 and 1996 and was Reporters Without Borders representative in Africa’s Great Lakes region in 1994-1995, based in Rwanda. He has been an Op-ed contributor to The New York Times and a consultant for non-governmental organizations, including the International Crisis Group, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and Internews. From 2016 to 2019, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003-2004 and holds a Masters in Journalism from Sorbonne University, Paris. He is the author of three books: Court of Remorse-Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Wisconsin University Press, 2010), The Master of Confessions-The Making of a Khmer Rouge Torturer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2014), and Terre Promise (Promised Land, 2018), a book on Sierra Leone.

**Nour El Bejjani Noureddine**
Nour El Bejjani Noureddine leads the Lebanon and Yemen programs at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). She joined ICTJ in 2014 and is currently based in Beirut. ICTJ works for justice in countries that have endured massive human rights abuses under repression and in conflict. It works with victims, civil society groups, and national and international organizations to ensure redress for victims and to help prevent atrocities from happening again. Nour previously worked at the United Nations Development Program on governance issues in the Arab Region as a regional project officer with a focus on elections in the region. With more than 15 years of experience, Nour has worked with civil society organizations, victims’ communities, policymakers, and governmental institutions on various issues with special focus on transitional justice, elections, civil society reform, and gender issues. Nour holds an LL.M. in Public Law from the Faculty of Law at La Sagesse University and an LL.B. from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the Lebanese University.

**Judie Kaberia**
Judie Kaberia is a multi-award-winning journalist who in her over ten years of experience, served as a reporter and an associate editor. Her investigative work focused primarily on legal and justice issues, human rights, equality, and health. As a holder of a master’s degree in New Media, Governance and Democracy, from the University of Leicester (UK), Judie has written a booklet, “Justice and Peace in the Kenyan Eye”, which elaborates on the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya. Judie is the Executive Director for Association of Media Women in Kenya (AMWIK). She also chairs the Africa Check Foundation board in Kenya, a subsidiary of Africa Check, Trust-Africa’s leading independent fact-checking organization, and has served as the East African Coordinator for Wayamo Foundation.

MODERATOR

Milena Sterio, the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Managing Director at 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.