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U n i v e r s i t y N e w s
Bassiouni Receives Hague Prize for International Law
Longtime international human rights jurist, scholar and
activist M. Cherif Bassiouni, distinguished research professor
in the College of Law, was honored with The Hague Prize for
International Law in a ceremony in the Peace Palace at The Hague,
Netherlands, on June 28. The universally recognized prize
acknowledges his outstanding contribution to “the study and
promotion of international criminal law in general and to the
creation of the International Criminal Court in general,” according
to The Hague Foundation. Bassiouni was chosen as its first recipient.
Bassiouni has many ties to The Hague, the world’s center of international
justice. In the early 1990s, Bassiouni chaired the United Nations’
Commission of Experts, which produced evidence of war crimes in
the former Yugoslavia and led to the establishment of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia by the Security Council.
That work continues to be useful to this day. When the International
Court of Justice at The Hague recently rendered a decision about
genocide in that region, they cited the report of the Commission of
Experts 34 times, according to Bassiouni.
This commission’s work was linked to DePaul. “The database for
the commission was in the College of Law’s International Human Rights
Law Institute [IHRLI], and we had more than 140 law students and
young lawyers, mostly from DePaul, who worked in it,” says Bassiouni,
who was co-founder and president of IHRLI.
Bassiouni also chaired the committee that drafted the statute
for the International Criminal Court, which was established at
The Hague in 2002 to try individuals responsible for genocide and
other serious violations of international humanitarian law.
In heading the IHRLI (he is now president emeritus) and the
International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa,
Italy, Bassiouni has worked all over the world, helping Iraq craft its
new constitution and train judges and lawyers; investigating human
rights abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq; teaching state security police
about human rights in Cairo; and many other missions.
“The nature of the work itself is very painful,” says Bassiouni.
“When I first investigated the policy of systematic rape in the former
Yugoslavia, I interviewed 223 rape victims—probably the most
heart-wrenching experience I’ve ever had.”
“Tangible results”
are what keep him
going, he says.
“When I first went to
Afghanistan at the end
of 2004 [representing
the United Nations],
I discovered 852
people who had been
unlawfully imprisoned
for over 30 months.
And the prison conditions
were horrible.
I worked day and night
for three months and
I finally got them out.”
Bassiouni says
that an accomplishment
of this nature
is not personal satisfaction,
but something
larger. “It’s a different
kind of joy. It’s as if
Hague Prize Recipient Bassiouni
God used me as his
instrument to get this
thing done,” he says.
He also sees The Hague Prize in larger terms. “The advantage
of the award is that you can use it to make other people aware
of what needs to be done in defense of human rights,” he says.
One of the components of the prize is the opportunity to give
the keynote address to the Hague Colloquium on Fundamental
Principles of Law that takes place in the year after the award. Bassiouni
says his topic will be “what it always is—the need for international
criminal justice, the need for early intervention to prevent genocide,
crimes against humanity and war crimes. The need for human justice
remains irrespective of who the victims are.”
For Bassiouni, this work is “a fundamental part of Vincentian
values. That’s what our students must learn.”