Human Rights Speaker Series: Are enforced disappearances disappearing from the multilateral agenda?

This seminar event hosted by the Human Rights Centre will be explored by our guest speakers Olivier de Frouville, Professor at University of Paris and Dr Xavier Aurey, Lecturer of French Public Law and International Human Rights Law at University of Essex.

Are enforced disappearances disappearing from the multilateral agenda?

From the end of the 1970s till the mid-2000s, there has been a growing attention at the international and regional levels on the phenomenon of enforced disappearances. This development resulted, among others, in their integration as a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and, ultimately, in the adoption of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons Against Enforced Disappearances in 2006.

Since the entry into force of the Convention, on 23 December 2010, we are facing a paradox: never has the notion of enforced disappearance been so well identified at the international level, and yet this crime seems to be very low, or even non-existent, on the multilateral agenda.

Professor Olivier de Frouville

Olivier de Frouville is a Professor at the University of Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas) and Director of the Paris Human Rights Center (C.R.D.H.). His fields of research cover mainly general international law, the theory of international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law.

Parallel to his academic career, Olivier de Frouville has worked for more than twenty years as a human rights expert in the United Nations. In June 2019, he was elected as a member of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances. Previously he has been a member of the UN Human Rights Committee (2015-2018) and of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (2008-2014), of which he was the Chair-Rapporteur between April 2012 and October 2013. He was also a member of the Coordination Committee of UN Special Procedures in 2013-2014.

As special envoy of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH),

Olivier de Frouville has represented this organisation during the negotiations of the Declaration on human rights defenders (1995-1998) and of the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons against Enforced Disappearances (2003-2006).

Dr Xavier Aurey

Xavier Aurey is a lecturer in French Public Law and International Human Rights Law. After being awarded a PhD in International Law in September 2015 (University Pantheon-Assas Paris 2, France PhD prize from the University 2016), Xavier spent a year on a post-doctoral position at the University of Angers (France) to study gender discriminations in a comparative constitutional law approach.

 In his PhD dissertation, he has questioned the capacity of the traditional human rights framework to protect individuals from exploitation in the biomedical field. He has demonstrated that, in the biomedical economy, when there is a lack of transparency and unjust collective benefits sharing, the implementation of universal principles such as dignity and autonomy is never sufficient to protect the most vulnerable from exploitation. Since 2006, Xavier has been involved in teaching French Public Law, International and European Human Rights Law, and French Public Liberties at the University of Caen Normandie (France). Realizing that French law students can greatly benefit from Clinical Legal Education, he established in 2009 the first French law clinic focused on human rights and has developed since 2013 a Francophone network for clinical legal education (https://www.cliniques-juridiques.org).

As an international consultant, he worked in January 2017 for the OSCE on access to justice programme to develop a law clinic in Mitrovice, Kosovo.