Genocide Information Questions
... "Genocide," a term used to describe violence against members of a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group with the intent to destroy the entire group, came into general usage only after
World War II, when the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against the
Jews of Europe ...
William Schabas
William Anthony Schabas, OC (born 19 November 1950) is a Canadian academic in the field of international criminal and human rights law, and has been called 'the world expert on the law of genocide and international law.' He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty. He has written over 18 monographs and 200 articles. In 2009 he was elected President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, as well as holding a position on the Board of Directors of the International Institute for Criminal Investigation and René Cassin, a non-government organisation that presents a Jewish voice on human rights.Schabas also sits on the advisory board of the Israel Law Review, the Journal of International Criminal Justice and is editor-in-chief of Criminal Law Forum, the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law.He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights. Schabas served as one of seven commissioners on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and as one of six commissioners on the Iran Tribunal Truth Commission from 18 to 22 June 2012.Author of more than 350 academic journal articles, Schabas has delivered lectures or conference papers in more than fifty countries. Writings have been cited in judgments, decisions and opinions of: International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Special Court for Sierra Leone, European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Supreme Court of Canada, United States Supreme Court, Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, High Court of Tanzania and Supreme Court of Israel.In 2014 Schabas was appointed the head of a UN Committee investigating the role of Israel in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. The appointment was criticized by Canada's Foreign Minister, John Baird, and the Geneva-based advocacy NGO UN Watch, on the basis of allegations that Schabas was anti-Israel, a charge he denied. In February 2015 he resigned after an Israeli complaint that he provided legal advice to the Palestine Liberation Organization which is a clear conflict of interests, confirming prior allegations of his bias. Schabas stated that he was resigning to stop the controversy from overshadowing the work of the Gaza inquiry, whose results were due in March. Avigdor Lieberman hailed his resignation as an 'achievement for Israeli diplomacy'.