Payam Akhavan is Professor of International Law at McGill University in Montreal. He was previously a Visiting Professor at Yale Law School and University of Toronto. He received his PHD at Harvard Law School and has published extensively on human rights, including "Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?"
(2001) 95 American Journal of International Law 7, selected by the International Library of Law and Legal Theory as one of "the most significant published journal essays in contemporary legal studies." He served as the first UN war crimes prosecutor at The Hague advising on the Milosevic and other leading trials, and has served with the UN in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia, and East Timor. He has also served as counsel and advocate in several high-profile cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, and the US Supreme Court in the landmark case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Among many human rights matters, he served as Chairman of the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide, campaigned for justice for the murder of Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi, and secured the release of former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who was imprisoned by the military to prevent her from running in forthcoming elections. He is Co-Founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre and has been appointed by the Canadian Government to the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democracy. In 2005, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.
Sypnosis: Accountability and building democracy
Iran is viewed predominantly through the political realist perspective of nuclear proliferation, energy stability, and regional security. Human rights are viewed by policy-makers as marginally relevant to national interests and power realities. In diverse situations, from the former Yugoslavia to South Africa to Argentina, accountability for past human rights abuses has been a vital ingredient of building a culture of democracy and the rule of law. Impunity for crimes against humanity, such as the mass-executions of 1988 in Iran, profoundly shapes the rules of power and legitimacy. There can be long-term stability or meaningful democratic transformation so long as those responsible for such egregious crimes continue to occupy positions of power. This can be achieved through different measures such as international or national tribunals, truth commissions, or other means of making a clean break with a culture of impunity. Even if the time is not yet ripe for official endorsement of such measures, it is vital to keep the memory of such crimes alive through documentation and popular discourse in order to ensure that they will not be relegated to oblivion.
The video is in English
Return | Back to the program | Continue
Lousnak • Elahe Machouf • Red Names • Shirin • Ms.sun • Looli • Hossein Afsahi • Saeed Yousef • Danielle Ouanes
Hassan Pooya • Soudabeh Ardavan • Setareh Abbasi • Shohreh Kia • Mahbubeh • Payam Akhavan • Shahrzad Mojab
Béatrice Vaugrante • Masoud Raouf • Mostafa Henaway • Stephan Kazemi • Saiid Ismati • Zari Daknema • Antigone
Marie Boti • Felicitas Treue • Bahram Ghadimi • Shokoufe Sakhi • Iraj Mesdaghi • Reza Gahfari • Ezat Mossallanejed