Fair Labelling and the Dilemma of Prosecuting Gender-Based Crimes at the International Criminal Tribunals

Hilmi M. Zawati is President of the International Legal Advocacy Forum (ILAF), an international criminal law jurist, and human rights advocate. Over the past three decades, and ever since the first reports of war crimes during the Yugoslav dissolution war of 1992-1995 Dr. Zawati has been a committed human rights activist, and has actively advocated human rights of wartime rape victims throughout the world. A prominent speaker and author on a number of hotly debated legal issues, Dr. Zawati has addressed major academic and professional groups in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the United States, and Canada. His present primary research and teaching areas are: public international law; international criminal law; international humanitarian and human rights law; international gender justice system; international environmental law of armed conflict; social diversity and the law; judicial mechanisms under universal jurisdiction; and Islamic law of nations (siyar). He is the author of several prize-winning books on international humanitarian and human rights law, including his most recent book: The Triumph of Ethnic Hatred and the Failure of International Political Will: Gendered Violence and Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (2010).