Help Desk

ICD – a living hub on international criminal law in The Hague

A new feature of the International Crimes Database (ICD) is this ‘Help Desk’ page. It has been established specifically for the participants of our new trainings for practitioners on international and transnational criminal law, which we organise in cooperation with the Cassese Initiative.

How does it work?

Through this page, participants can access an online environment, using the login information provided to them prior to the training:

This environment allows the participants to access a wealth of quality information including the course literature, and the speakers’ PowerPoint presentations. Through this network-environment, the participants can interact with their fellow participants, as well as engaging and interacting directly with the international criminal law and transnational criminal law networks of the Asser Institute and the Cassese Initiative. The participants will thus have direct access to the Institute’s staff members, as well as professionals working in The Hague, such as legal officers, prosecutors and judges working at The Hague District Court, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), or the International Criminal Court (ICC). Through this interactive component and the sharing of networks, we seek to build – together – a global and living hub on international criminal law and related fields in The Hague, centred around the work of the Asser Institute and its ICD.

Asser & international criminal law

Indeed, the T.M.C. Asser Instituut is involved in various other projects on international criminal law.

In addition to academic research on the topic, as for example evidenced by the recent publication Legal Responses to Transnational and International Crimes: Towards and Integrative Approach, co-authored by Asser senior researcher and ICD project leader Dr. Christophe Paulussen, numerous other activities can be mentioned here.

For example, in 2003, the Asser Institute started the Supranational Criminal Law (SCL) Lecture Series, in cooperation with the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. These lectures on international criminal law have welcomed the biggest names in the field to the institute, such as former International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, the late Prof. Cherif Bassiouni of DePaul University, Benjamin Ferencz, the only surviving Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor, and many others.

Moreover, the Asser Institute has set up, together with the STL, an Inter-University Programme on International Criminal Law and Procedure in which 11 Lebanese universities participate.

Many of the SCL and Lebanon lectures can be viewed here, on the ICD (see ‘Commentary’).

The inter-university convening power of the Asser Institute also comes back in it being the coordinator of the International and Humanitarian Criminal Law Platform, an academic network on international humanitarian law and international criminal law in which several institute/universities participate: the T.M.C. Asser Instituut, the University of Amsterdam (in particular the Amsterdam Center for International Law), the VU University Amsterdam, Leiden University (in particular the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies), the University of Groningen, the Netherlands Defence Academy, Tilburg University, Maastricht University and the Institute for International Law of the KU Leuven.

And a final example is our Summer Law Programme on International Criminal Law and International Legal & Comparative Approaches to Counter-Terrorism, which we organise this year for the 12^th time in cooperation with Washington College of Law.

Contact

Organisations and individuals interested in attending our interactive trainings on international and transnational criminal law or who more generally want to join our global hub on international criminal law and related fields can contact Dr. Christophe Paulussen.