Celia Moh Professorial Chair Public Lecture - UN Accountability for Human Rights Violations: the Kosovo Initiative

4 April 2012, 5.00pm to 6.30pm, Singapore Management University, Administration Building

International institutions are set up to provide security and stability where national institutions are inadequate, have been destroyed (for example through conflict) or are not functioning. But such institutions themselves contribute to insecurity where their own actions impinge upon the human rights of the affected population. However there is in many instances no mechanism for ensuring accountability of international institutions and a climate of impunity prevails, thereby undermining the legitimacy and credibility of the organizational activity, provoking hostility and distrust, and threatening its effectiveness. It has therefore become important to seek ways of making international institutions responsible for human rights violations in a way that is transparent and open. The lecture will consider the first institution established to receive and consider individual complaints of human rights abuses by an international administration through the operation of its mandate in the field: the Kosovo Human Rights Advisory Panel. It will examine the debates around its establishment, its jurisdiction, the problems it has faced, the types of cases that have been the subject of communications made to it and why it may - or may not - be an important step in promoting United Nations accountability.

Official Website & Online Registration: http://www.law.smu.edu.sg/celia_moh/index.asp.