Panel: '(Non-)Defining 'Gender' in the Crimes Against Humanity Draft: Possibilities, Alliances, and Strategies'

Time: 10am - 12pm

A recording of this event is available at: https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/lecture-recordings

Feminist activists, country representatives, and other civil society actors have debated how to define “gender” in international criminal law (ICL) for at least three decades. In the Rome Conference that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its Statute in 1998, defining “gender” was a hotly debated topic of negotiation. More recently, this debate has resurfaced in the steps leading to the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles for a Crimes Against Humanity Treaty, and continues to be discussed in the deliberations at the Sixth Committee on the Draft Articles. The CAH Convention is now expected to be negotiated between 2026-2029, and, more than a mere point of contention, the concept of ‘gender’ in its text can be crucial for prosecuting sexual and gender-based international crimes and thus fundamental to gender justice efforts worldwide. With this in mind, this roundtable gathers scholars and activists studying and working (often simultaneously) on the definition of gender in international criminal law, in an effort to learn from their specific positionalities, perceptions, and experiences about the challenges, strategies, and possibilities for (non-)defining the term. 

Speakers:

Akila Radhakrishnan (Atlantic Council)
Alexandra Lily Kather (Emergent Justice Collective)
Dr Rosemary Grey (Sydney Law School)
Professor Valerie Oosterveld (Faculty of Law, Western University)

Moderators:

Dr Juliana Santos de Carvalho (LCIL Fellow and INT ACDF Fellow at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies)
Dr Lena Holzer (LCIL Fellow and Assistant Professor in Gender, Race and the Law in the Law Faculty at the University of Cambridge)

With support from the UCCGS

(Photo credit: Alexandra Lily Kather)