International

n an interview with Rahim Kanani, a research associate at Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Amaka Megwalu ’10 discusses her insights on the aid industry in Africa and the Gacaca Court System in Rwanda. Megwalu has worked on development and post-conflict reconstruction in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

The Government of the Russian Federation has nominated Bakhtiyar Tuzmukhamedov LL.M. ’94 as a permanent judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The following op-ed by Lecturer on Law Ganesh Sitaraman ’08, “The land of 10,000 wars,” appeared in the August 17, 2009, edition of the New York Times.

President Barack Obama ’91 nominated Barry White ’67 to be the U.S. Ambassador to Norway on August 7.

South African President Jacob Zuma has nominated Sandile Ngcobo LL.M. ’86 to become the country’s new chief justice, responsible for leading South Africa’s judiciary.

Last year, Matthew F. Wells ’09 traveled through Sierra Leone visiting more than two dozen artisanal diamond mines, under the auspices of the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School.

Benjamin Ferencz ’43, known for his role as chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials and for his work promoting an international rule of law and the creation of an International Criminal Court, has been awarded the prestigious Erasmus Prize. The prize is given to individuals who have made “especially important contributions to culture, society, or social science in Europe.”  

“From 2007 to 2008, the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan’s ongoing conflict rose 40 percent, according to U.N. figures.” So begins the report co-written by Erica Gaston ’07, with Rebecca Wright, during Gaston’s Henigson Fellowship year in Afghanistan, which started in January 2008.

On Friday July 24, President Barack Obama ’91 announced that the United States will sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, joining more than 100 other nations. The Harvard Law School Project on Disability played a prominent role in the negotiations leading up to the convention, which is the first global human rights treaty of the 21st century.

Harvard Law School was well represented in the inaugural Qatar Law Forum in late May—an unprecedented gathering of legal luminaries from some 35 nations, including 12 chief justices, the presidents of the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and prominent legal officials, legal educators and practitioners. (Watch video from the forum.)

For the last four years, Juan Zarate ’97 has not gotten very much sleep. As the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, Zarate spent countless hours poring over the National Counterterrorism Center’s threat matrix.

A major research project from Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society’s Internet and Democracy Project has lent enormous insight into the previously unexplored flow of online communication in the Middle East and North Africa. The study, “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent,” comes at a time of tremendous political unrest and electronic activism in the Middle East.

In the global financial crises, will Robert Zoellick '81 hold rich nations accountable to the developing world? Bank on it.

In March, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of a crackdown on protests in Tibetan regions in China, people across the PRC found they couldn’t access YouTube—which had hosted videos of the protests the year before.

In 2007, when Erika Rickard was a 2L at Harvard Law, same-sex marriage had been legal in Massachusetts for more than three years. By that…

Andrew McLaughlin ’94 has been named deputy chief technology officer for the Obama Administration. Most recently, McLaughlin served as head of global public policy for Google.

William Burke-White ’02, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, has accepted a two-year assignment in the Office of Foreign Policy Planning, an internal think tank at the State Department. He will focus on long-range policy issues concerning Russia and international law.

Support for International Adoption principles is growing, says HLS Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, citing endorsements for Policy Statement and the recent Malawi ruling in the Madonna case.

This weekend, leaders from the United States and China will gather in Cambridge to examine challenges facing the financial sectors of the two countries. The annual “Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century: An Agenda for China and the United States” is organized by Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems (PIFS) and the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF).

David Kennedy ’80, a renowned expert in international law, returned to Harvard Law School as a full-time professor in the fall of 2009. Kennedy was on the HLS full-time faculty for more than three decades until he became vice president for International Affairs at Brown University in 2008.

A new report issued by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School calls for the UN Security Council to act on human rights abuses in Burma. The report, “Crimes in Burma,” comes in the wake of renewed international attention due to the continued persecution of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.