An introductory welcome speech was held by Dr Colum Murphy, Founder and President of the Geneva School of Diplomacy. Students and GSD staff greatly enjoyed and appreciated this event.

For more information about this programme please visit the UNOG website:

http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006AC19C/(httpPages)/8E865A1942E8E45B80256EF30034C255?OpenDocument

The GSD team

Central Theme of Disarmament Highlights Continued Worldwide Need for Quality Leaders.

Geneva, Switzerland, June 28, 2010 – Following an honored tradition to recognize outstanding services and achievements for the world community, three central players in the field of global disarmament were awarded honorary doctorates upon the Geneva School of Diplomacy’s graduation of its current Bachelor and Master Classes Saturday on Saturday June 26. This year’s honorees are:

• Professor Yuri Nazarkine, Head of Arms Control teaching at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and former START treat Chief Negotiator for the Soviet Union.
• H.E. Mr. Dáithí O’Ceallaigh, Ambassador of the Republic of Ireland.
• H.E. Mr. Ahmet Üzümcü, Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey.

During the Graduate Award Ceremony, each recipient delivered a speech to GSD’s students and faculty. Along with the Ambassadors, 27 students graduated from GSD with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

“We are extremely pleased to award our distinguished 2010 honorees this well-deserved recognition for their tireless efforts in disarmament. The theme re-emphasizes the continued need for qualified leaders and humanitarians dedicated to advancing the global peace process. It is our mission at GSD to educate and shape such future leaders, and personalities like the recipients of honorary GSD doctorates serve as role models to our students. Especially this year’s crop has produced some remarkably talented graduates and I am very optimistic about their abilities to influence the course of society over the next generation or two,” said Dr. Colum Murphy, Founder and President of the Geneva School of Diplomacy.

“In all my years of service in diplomacy, arms control and disarmament has been a central theme to my work, and one that I find very interesting and challenging. Sharing my knowledge and experience in international relations with the younger generation, I believe it important to explain to my students the significance of arms control and non-proliferation measures for international peace and security. It is therefore a great pleasure indeed not only to see my diplomatic work appreciated through this prestigious honorary doctorate but also to witness GSD students graduate today who I have had the pleasure to educate in this field,” said Professor Yuri Nazarkine, a GSD professor heading the school’s Arms Control teaching and a former START Treaty Chief negotiator for the Soviet Union.

Some of the previous recipients of honorary degrees from GSD are Nobel Laureate and President of Timor Leste, José Ramos-Horta; H.E. Yang Jiechi, Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China; HRH Prince Albert of Monaco; The Hon. Noerine Kaleeba; Professor Curtis Roosevelt; President of Bosnia Herzegovina, Haris Silajdžić; Holocaust Survivor and Writer Martin Gray; Adolf Ogi, Former President of Switzerland; Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Reports on Climate Change; President Mikhail Gorbachev, Former President of the Soviet Union, —  and many others.

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Everyone at GSD would like to thank the Dean and his family for their gracious hospitality, excellent food, and stimulating conversation, all of which were greatly enjoyed and appreciated.

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H.E. Mrs. Dupuy Lasserre was a guest speaker for the special lecture delivered and organized by Prof. Umberto Bandiera for the Bachelor’s “International Relations & Latin America” course .

Addressing GSD students and faculty, the Ambassador discussed Uruguay’s challenges in the new global markets and the institutional changes experienced by “MERCOSUR”, the  Regional Trade Agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay founded in 1991 by the Treaty of Asunción. H.E. illustrated in detail the pros and cons of such international trade agreements, and stressed the importance of conducting pragmatic commercial diplomacy in this period of new opportunities for international trade.

Please click here to view the gallery.

Addressing GSD students and faculty, Dr. Moradian gave a candid and in-depth overview of Afghanistan’s current situation, challenges, and opportunities. The eloquent and enlightening 30 minute speech, titled “Our Perspective”, and the ensuing Q&A session helped students better understand the complexities of the issues Afghanistan is facing at this time and for many years to come.

Prior to joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Moradian was the chief of Presidential Programmes at President Karzai’s Office. Dr Moradian completed his undergraduate studies at the University of London in the fields of International relations and International law. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of St Andrews, where he also taught International Relations.

Please click here to view the gallery.

Theme of the conference: ”Medz Yeghérn – Can we prevent new genocides of the past without acknowledging those?”

Other speakers include

• National Councillor Mr. Ueli Leuenberger, President of the Greens and Swiss co-chairman of the parliamentary Switzerland – Armenia
• Luc Baghdassarian, Conductor

For organizational purposes, an RSVP to the organizer is expressly desired.

Contact:

Sarkis Shahinian, President of the Swiss Association – Armenia (ASA)
Email: shahinian@armenian.ch
www.armenian.ch / asa

Gustavo A. Olivares M. received DES and PhD degrees in international relations with specialization in international law from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies (HEI). He studied law in Lima, Geneva and London, has been a visiting research fellow at the Hague Academy of International Law, a visiting doctoral student at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a visiting scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the Law School (CLS) at Columbia University.

He is an adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and has lectured on multilateral trade diplomacy and trade negotiations at HEI’s Diplomatic Studies Programme, University of Toronto at Scarborough, ESCP-EAP European School of Management in Paris, Geneva exchange programmes of the Australian National University (ANU) and Boston University, and in other university institutions in Europe and Latin America.

Prof. Olivares works as an independent consultant on trade policy and trade-related capacity-building and training, non-tariff measures and other subjects with several European consulting firms, NGOs and IOs. He served as the regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean with the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO–ITC’s World Trade Net Programme, as a legal and training officer/consultant with the WTO’s Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation, as a consultant with UNCTAD and various governments in Latin America and East Asia, and as a trade representative (counsellor) to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

His teaching and research topics of interest in international economic law and international economic relations range from trade policy and trade negotiations, the interface between the public and private sectors in trade policy formulation, regional integration, international cooperation for development, to the legal aspects of the international monetary and financial systems, including the legal aspects of the globalizing economic process and the workings of the international economic and financial institutions.

Courses taught:

• International Trade Law Issues
• Economic Diplomacy
• Current Global Economic Problems
• International Trade and Development: Issues for the XXI Century

Published Printed Works:

• “The Essence of Economic Globalization: the Legal Dimension”(Revue Belge de Droit International, 2003)
• “The Case for Giving Effectiveness to GATT/WTO Rules on Developing Countries and LDCs” (Journal of World Trade, 2001)

He is currently working on a book on “State External Financial and Monetary Debts: the Case for Setting Up a Quasi Judicially-Based Multilateral Conflict Solving System.”

The formal agreement was signed by Dr. Murphy, president of GSD, and Prof. Li Hezhang, Vice President of Beijing Institute of Technology, during a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room at the Château de Penthes.

This partnership agreement aims to strengthen the cooperative relationships and to improve the educational programmes of both institutions through a systematic exchange of academic information, professional staff, students, lectures and through collaboration, as well as research and other academic activities.

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The Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace and President of Timor Leste, Dr. José Ramos Horta, visited the Geneva School of Diplomacy on Friday 12 March. Receiving one of its most famous alumni, along with his party, was a proud moment for the university: in 2006 GSD conferred on Dr. Ramos Horta the degree of Doctor of International Relations (DIR), honoris causa.

On a sunny Spring afternoon (at the end of an unusually long Winter !) the flag of recently independent Timor Leste, flew proudly, and appropriately, over a sunny Geneva campus. The Timorese party included Foreign Minister D’Costa and Timor Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, H.E. Joaquim Fonseca. The Timor Leste party was greeted in the chateau forecourt by GSD President Dr. Colum Murphy and members of the GSD faculty. The party then made its way to the Pavillon Gallatin where the student audience awaited.

In brief remarks of welcome Dr Murphy described the conferring ceremony back in 2006 when Dr. Ramos Horta, detained by turmoil in Timor Leste and unable to be physically present in Switzerland, nevertheless managed to movingly address the assembled audience in Geneva by phone. “The voice of Dr. Ramos Horta” Dr. Murphy said “has a way of carrying across continents, coming at you from unexpected places, in unexpected ways. It was the voice” Dr. Murphy said “of the oppressed, of the weak, of the ‘wretched of the earth’”. It was a voice that had stood for human rights and human dignity for many decades. President Ramos Horta, Murphy said, was “a most courageous champion of peace and dignity, a hunter of justice”.

In his highly successful address to the students and faculty Dr Ramos Horta described, with both eloquence and humour, the difficult years of the Timorese struggle for freedom and recognition. Speaking without notes, President Ramos Horta described the many human and diplomatic obstacles his country had faced and steadily overcome. His country had begun its life as an independent nation with little or no economic resources. His country  -  of less than a million people  -  had had to turn for help both to the international community and to scattered friends across the globe, often with little more resources than that of a small business. Above all, however, Timor Leste had successfully relied on the creativity and courage of its own people.

At the ceremony’s conclusion Dr. Murphy pledged to President Ramos Horta and to the people of Timor Leste the continuing assistance “in whatever small way we can” of the GSD community. The exceptional speech of Dr Ramos Horta, its relaxed and insightful eloquence, had captivated its GSD audience. President Ramos Horta was given a standing ovation.

The successful Timorese Presidential Visit concluded with a (relaxed and sunny !) GSD reception on the terrace of the GSD de Sales building.

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HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL SIDE EVENT

Panel on Berkeley’s Project 2048 and progress toward a World Court on Human Rights

The history of human rights consciousness and standard-setting can be seen as a sequence of religious and philosophical declarations at the national, regional and global level that put into focus the beliefs and aspirations of the times. These documents reflect the evolving understanding of the underlying principles of human dignity and equality.  They embody an agreement about the individual and collective rights that governments must both promote and protect.

The most recent constellation of texts can be traced back to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many organizations and individuals rely on those texts to stem gross violations taking place in all regions of the world, including torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions. While Berkeley Law School’s Project 2048 acknowledges the importance of protecting rights through existing instruments, we also ask an equally important question: what will be the next generation of instruments to ensure and protect human rights and human dignity? What will the state of human rights be in the year 2048, one hundred years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration?  Will civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights be realized?  Will the rights to peace, the right to the homeland, the right to one’s identity be effectively protected?

We are all aware of the fact that there is a considerable gap between norms and implementation. Human rights law is not mathematics – it is sometimes applied selectively and arbitrarily.  Some even speak of “international law à la carte”.  Project 2048 explores ways of bridging the gap, welcomes the monitoring activities of the Human Rights Council and the UN treaty-bodies and aims at strengthening the role of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The credibility of the system will benefit through the establishment of an international court of human rights whose decisions should be binding and enforceable.  In November 2009 Berkeley hosted a conference devoted to drafting a statute for an international court. Among the participants were the first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Dr. José Ayala Lasso, the former Acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Professor Bertrand Ramcharan, ICTY Justice Ted Meron, and Professor Manfred Nowak.

List of Speakers Professor Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture:

• Professor Bruna Molina, Moderator, Geneva School of Diplomacy

• Professor Kirk Boyd, Berkeley University Law School

• Mishana Hosseinioun, Oxford University doctoral student, member of advisory board 2048

• Professor Carlos Villan Duran, President of the Spanish Society for International Human Rights Law

• Alfred de Zayas, Professor of International Law, Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, member International Society for Human Rights

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