Brennan Justice Talks 2024 #3 Palestine and International Justice
On 26 January 2024, by an overwhelming majority, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held that Palestinians in Gaza were facing a plausible risk of genocide. In the interim ruling, the Court also recognised that Gaza has become largely “uninhabitable” and that the civilian population “remains extremely vulnerable”.
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch reported that the Israeli government was using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. In March 2024 the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is the international authority assessing food crises, said northern Gaza was at risk of imminent famine. The World Food Programme forecast that famine was likely to arrive between March and May for over 300,000 people trapped in Gaza’s two northern governorates, with over 1.1 million people having completely exhausted food supplies and struggling with catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) and starvation, due to the Israeli government limiting emergency aid convoys and supplies, ready to be delivered to the region. The failure to deliver life-saving aid has taken place despite the ICJ's provisional orders outlining measures with which Israel must comply, including refraining from genocidal acts and ensuring the “immediate and effective” provision of humanitarian aid.
In this Justice Talk, our guest speakers will explain the basis for the ICJ’s interim January ruling, its implications for international governments and actors, as well the role of the International Criminal Court in investigating and prosecuting credible evidence of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Meet our Guest Speakers
Rita Jabri Markwell (Solicitor, Birchgrove Legal)
Rita Jabri Markwell is a practising solicitor with Birchgrove Legal, who works on a range of pro bono strategic public interest matters. As one of the legal advisors to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN), she brought the successful vilification claim against former Senator Fraser Anning and is currently managing ongoing matters in relation to X (formerly known as Twitter) and Meta. She has also taken a lead role in developing AMAN’s working definition of dehumanising material, that has been recognised by both researchers and civil society as a practical option for supporting platforms and regulators to take responsibility for dehumanisation of groups and treat it as a public harm. Rita was co-chair of a broad-based community coalition in Queensland that achieved criminal law reform to recognise crimes motivated by hatred. She also continues to publish on and advocate for reform to the terrorist act definition, to deal with its widespread effects on maintaining Islamophobia. Currently, she is engaged heavily on matters concerning racial discrimination and international law in relation to the situation in Palestine.
Dr Sara Dehm, Senior Lecturer UTS Law
Sara Dehm teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, legal history, international migration and refugee law, and the law of international organisations. Her research addresses questions of international authority, border control, knowledge production and migrant resistance in the context of European empires, settler colonialism and struggles for decolonisation. Her first book, Administering Migration: International Law and the Global Ordering of People, explores how international organisations have regulated human mobility over the course of the 20th century, and is under contract with Cambridge University Press.
