Professor Charli Carpenter Wins National Science Foundation Award to Study Crimes Against Humanity; Travels to the Hague
Assistant Professor Charli Carpenter has been awarded $67,463 by the National Science Foundation to study developments in the definition of crimes against humanity. Her project, “Defining ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ in International Law” will focus on the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, and investigate how language on gender-based crimes made it into the document. New legal concepts like “sexual slavery” and “forced pregnancy” were codified for the first time in 1998, but only after heated negotiations between competing transnational advocacy groups. According to Carpenter, much can be learned about global civil society by reconstructing significant political debates over complex and controversial issues such as these, to understand the politics of international humanitarian law treaty-making.
“The idea of the project is to track down and interview activists who were involved in getting language on sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and other gender crimes into this treaty,” Dr. Carpenter explains. “A fair amount has been written about the outcome of that process, but I want to analyze the political dynamics of the negotiating process itself.”
Carpenter will interview activists from both progressive and conservative delegations who participated in the Rome conference and those now involved with the ICC in order to better understand that process and the legal outcome. Her first stop is the Netherlands the week of July 3rd, where she will speak with officials at the International Criminal Court and activists at the Hague-based Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice. Additional interviews will be conducted at the Holy See in Rome later this year.
The research was funded by the Law and Social Sciences Division at the National Science Foundation. Carpenter hopes the analysis will enhance theoretical understanding of how new legal concepts get constructed (or framed off the agenda) in multilateral treaty negotiations, as well as to inform transnational advocacy around human rights and international criminal law.
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