THE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAM

presents

Richard Dicker

The International Criminal Court 5 Years after the Rome Statute's Entry into Force:

Progress and Problems

Thursday, October 11, 2007
12:30-2:00 pm
Solarium, Falconer Hall
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

Lunch provided

Richard Dicker has been the director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program since the program's beginning in 2001.  He is a graduate of New York University Law School and has received his LLM from Columbia University.  After his academic training, Mr. Dicker spent two years practicing civil rights law in New York.

For the past sixteen years, he has worked for Human Rights Watch, where he first focused on accountability issues in southern Africa and arbitrary detention in China.

In 1994-95, Mr. Dicker led Human Rights Watch's efforts to bring a case before the International Court of Justice charging the government of Iraq with genocide against the Kurds. Starting in 1995, he directed Human Rights Watch's multi-year campaign to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC).  He observed the preparatory negotiations at the United Nations and was present in Rome for the 1998 Diplomatic Conference that finalized the ICC treaty. In the last few years, he has been outspoken in defense of the ICC in the face of intense criticism by the U.S. government.

In addition to remaining very active with the ICC, Mr. Dicker has led advocacy efforts urging the creation of effective domestic accountability mechanisms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the former Yugoslavia. He has made several visits to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Balkans to meet with officials and nongovernmental organizations there.  In 2002-04, he observed segments of the Milosevic trial in The Hague, and in October 2005 he was present in Baghdad for the start of the Dujail trial against Saddam Hussein.  Richard Dicker's views appear frequently in the press on international justice issues.