WHEN:

27 September 2017, 19:00 – 20:30

WHERE:

Ukrainian Institute, 79 Holland Park, London W11 3SW

Admission:

The event is free, but registration is required. The event will be in English.

In 2016 the leading human-rights lawyer Philippe Sands won Britain’s premier non-fiction prize, the Baillie Gifford, with his forensic and passionate book East-West Street: on the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. A combination of wartime history and family memoir, it follows the intertwined lives of his own forbears and two Lviv-trained lawyers, Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, who assisted the Nuremberg prosecution and laid the foundations of international human rights law. All lost their families in the Holocaust. Sands also made a documentary for BBC4, My Nazi Legacy, in which he confronted the sons of two of Lviv’s wartime rulers, Hans Frank and Otto von Wachter, with the scenes of their crimes. Interviewed by the journalist and historian Anna Reid, Sands will talk about Lviv’s Jewish history and its memorialisation, and his ongoing project to establish a department of international human-rights law at Lviv University.

Speaker and moderator’s biographies:

Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law, University College London, Faculty of Laws 
Phillipe Sands is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals in the Faculty, and a key member of staff in the Centre for Law and the Environment. His teaching areas include public international law, the settlement of international disputes (including arbitration), and environmental and natural resources law.

Philippe is a regular commentator on the BBC and CNN and writes frequently for leading newspapers. He is frequently invited to lecture around the world, and in recent years has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto (2005), the University of Melbourne (2005) and the Université de Paris I (Sorbonne) (2006, 2007). He has previously held academic positions at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Kings College London and University of Cambridge and he was a Global Professor of Law at New York University from 1995-2003. He was co-founder of FIELD (Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development), and established the programmes on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the European Journal of International Law and Review of European Community and International Environmental Law (Blackwell Press). In 2007 he served as a judge for the Guardian First Book Prize award.Philippe Sands joined the Faculty in January 2002. He is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals in the Faculty, and a key member of staff in the Centre for Law and the Environment. His teaching areas include public international law, the settlement of international disputes (including arbitration), and environmental and natural resources law.
As a practicing barrister he has extensive experience litigating cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the European Court of Justice. He frequently advises governments, international organisations, NGOs and the private sector on aspects of international law. In 2003 he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He has been appointed to lists of arbitrators maintained by ICSID and the PCA.

Anna Reid 
Anna Reid is a journalist and historian. She worked as Kiev correspondent for The Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993-5, and later covered the country for the Economist Intelligence Unit. From 2002-6 she ran the think tank Policy Exchange’s foreign affairs programme. She is the author of Borderland: Journey through the History of Ukraine (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, third edition 2015), The Shaman’s Coat: a Native History of Siberia (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002), and Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44 (Bloomsbury, 2011). Anne is Trustee of the Ukrainian Institute in London.

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