A two-day symposium at York University, May 30 and 31, will bring together some of the world’s top legal scholars and jurists to explore issues related to serious international crimes, human rights and forced migration.

Organized by the Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security at Osgoode Hall Law School and McLaughlin College at York University, the symposium, titled “Serious International Crimes, Human Rights, and Forced Migration,” will be held in the Helliwell Centre, Room 1014, Ignat Kaneff Building (Osgoode Hall Law School) on the Keele Campus.

More than one year in the making, the symposium will bring together leading thinkers and authorities in the field to explore legal issues related to the commission of serious international crimes that result in the severest breaches in fundamental human rights. These breaches, such as the Syrian war, often produce mass forced displacement. The Syrian war is a well-documented ongoing humanitarian crisis. The death toll from this conflict was estimated to be as high as 570,000 people as of December 2018. More than 6.1 million people have been internally displaced by the Syrian war and 5.7 million have fled the country.

Those who are responsible for serious international crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression, are excluded from refugee protection under the various international instruments that are intended to protect refugees. International and municipal law recognize the basic ethical and moral principle that those who are responsible for creating refugees shall not receive the protection of laws intended to protect refugees. There are many legal issues that come to the fore in cases involving those who are responsible for serious international crimes, both with respect to their prosecution or whether they seek asylum abroad based on a well-founded fear of persecution or are subject to exclusion from refugee protection. The symposium will seek to consider these difficult legal and public policy issues through an interesting symposium structure and format that brings together an international cohort of jurists, legal scholars and researchers.

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