GJC 2008 Events
Global Justice Center Brain Trust
Monday, 9 June, 2008
New York, NY
On June 9, 2008, the GJC convened top lawyers and legal scholars working on international human rights and gender equality for our first "Brain Trust" meeting. The Brain Trust brings together leading thinkers as part of the GJC strategic planning process to ensure that our work stays cutting edge and relevant and makes us even more effective at implementing legal strategies that integrate the gender perspective into the law. The Brain Trust's mix of academics and practitioners shared ideas and strategies, guided by three questions:
- What international law developments do you think have had a significant impact on gender equality? Where did they come from?
- What do you believe are the most "enduring obstacles" to the enforcement of international law in general? How do these obstacles compare to international law on gender?
- What are the specific challenges to enforcing civil and political gender equality? (e.g. easier to get support for women as victims than women as judges)
The conversation illuminated the important role that changing norms plays in guaranteeing equality and how to capitalize on international legal developments and embed them into the domestic system through the judiciary, government, education and partners on the ground. Two specific topics of focus were complementarity requirements of the International Criminal Court as an untested legal tool and particular strategies for using Security Council Resolution 1325. The Global Justice Center looks forward to delving further into the ideas and issues raised in the discussion and using them to frame out future work and for future Brain Trust meetings. We thank the participants for lending their time and expertise and look forward to further exploring these ideas.
The participants in the Brain Trust included:
- Janet Benshoof (Bio)
- Andrea Friedman (Bio)
- Zulma Miranda (Bio)
- Adrienne Fricke (Bio)
- Betsy Apple (Bio)
- Dr. Kelly Dawn Askin (Bio, Article)
- Professor Karima Bennoune (Bio, Article, Speech (Starts on page 57))
- Anne Tierney Goldstein (Bio)
- Jessica A. Neuwirth (Bio, Article 1, Article 2)
- Dr. Jeremy Sarkin (Bio)
- Ruti G. Teitel (Bio, Article 1, Article 2, Article 3)