New Laws, New Courts and New Opportunities: Advancing a Coordinated Legal Strategy for Women's Equality Rights
A brown bag lunch and conversation with Janet Benshoof
Tuesday, May 20th, 12 - 1pm
Tides Center, Pacific Room
Presidio Building 1014 (Lincoln Blvd. & Torney Ave.)
San Francisco, CA 94129
Globalization brings with it new opportunities to enforce international and constitutional equality guarantees for women both cross-nationally and in such global fora as the Security Council and International Criminal Courts. The historic opening of the International Criminal Court in the Hague in 2002 signals a paradigm shift in the global community's legal obligation to address those acts of genocide or other systematic grave crimes which are unaddressed or even perpetrated by states themselves. It is critical in this new stage of international law that the laws' enforcement and interpretation be shaped on gender equality as a basic premise.
During this brown bag conversation, Professor Janet Benshoof will give an overview of these advances in international law and will focus on how the legal obligations of the Security Council and individual states to end impunity and provide justice for sexual violence are not only vital to creating peace and stability but key to democracy itself.
Professor Benshoof will examine the opportunities, obstacles and challenges in using laws and legal mechanisms such as Responsibility to Protect, Resolution 1325, CEDAW, Genocide Convention, regional courts and rights treaties, and the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court to combat sexual and gender-based violence, to empower women leaders to use international law and take part in all decision making processes, and to embed key equality rights. She will present examples from Iraq, Burma, and Colombia.