Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law.
Here’s the abstract for Professor Amann’s article:
“Conventional narratives tend to represent the post-World War II international criminal proceedings as a men’s project, thus obscuring the many women who participated, as lawyers, journalists, analysts, interpreters, witnesses, and defendants. Indeed, two women stood trial before Nuremberg Military Tribunals. This article examines the case of the only woman found not-guilty: Inge Viermetz, who had been an administrator at Lebensborn, the Nazi SS adoption and placement agency. The article outlines the prosecution’s child-taking case against Viermetz, as well as her successful gendered self-portrayal as a conventionally feminine caregiver. With references to Professor Megan A. Fairlie, at whose memorial symposium it was presented, the article concludes by considering contemporary implications of this acquittal at Nuremberg.”
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently took part in a New York conference that launched the Children and Crimes Against Humanity Coalition, formed to ensure that child justice is embedded in a treaty to be negotiated at the United Nations.
Professor Amann, who chaired a conference panel entitled “Increasing Visibility of Crimes Affecting Children and New Crimes Against Children,” commented on drafts and is an individual endorser of the Coalition white paper. Here at Georgia Law, she is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. She was Special Adviser to International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict from 2012 to 2021, and has served since 2023 on the Bring Back Kids UA Task Force. Her recent publications in this field include “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024), and “International Child Law and the Settlement of Ukraine‑Russia and Other Conflicts,” 99 International Law Studies 559 (2022).
By U.N. General Assembly resolution, states will conclude the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty – known formally as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity – following diplomatic plenipotentiary conferences in 2028 and 2029. Preparatory meetings will take place in the interim, beginning next January.
The treaty’s text will derive from draft articles adopted in 2019 by the International Law Commission, and from amendments to those articles which U.N. member states may propose during the negotiation process.
Through efforts like the Columbia conference and the just-released white paper, the Children and Crimes Against Humanity Coalition will endeavor to promote states’ proposals to include in child-related provisions in the final treaty text. Its white paper proposes, inter alia: that every person under 18 be defined as a child; that the crime of persecution expressly include age as a prohibited ground; and the enumeration of acts that may constitute crimes against humanity explicitly include recruitment and use of children by armed groups and armed forces, as well as forced marriage. Further provisions relate to national justice and reparations proceedings; among these is the proposal that any child suspected of having committed a crime against humanity will be treated in a country’s child justice system, and not via an adult criminal prosecution.
The white paper’s authors are Véronique Aubert (Save the Children), Zoé Bertrand (Global Survivors Fund), Janine Morna (Amnesty International), and Zama Neff (Human Rights Watch). Those nongovernmental organizations co-sponsored the May 5 conference, along with various units of Columbia University and the U.N. permanent missions of Andorra, Brazil, Malta, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
University of Georgia School of Law alumna and Dean Rusk International Law Center Council member Tess Davis (J.D. ’09) was featured in the documentary “LOOT: A Story of Crime and Redemption,” which highlights the illicit art dealings of Western museums.
From remote Cambodian villages to elite art institutions in New York, LOOT : A Story of Crime & Redemption is a daring look into the underbelly of the multi-billion-dollar art market and the deadly reality behind “blood antiquities” filling Western museums today. During Cambodia’s civil war, British “adventurer-scholar” Douglas Latchford led an extensive criminal network, looting centuries-old temples hidden within landmine-filled jungles. The film offers access to key players, including “Blue Tiger” a former child soldier turned looter who now fights to return stolen artifacts.
The film tells the gripping story of the contrast of rich and poor as viewers learn about multi-million-dollar sales of works looted by Cambodian farmers paid $20.00 per week while risking their lives. LOOT : A Story of Crime and Redemption also takes viewers behind-the-scenes as stolen pieces are returned to Cambodia, including some arriving from New York’s Met Museum in July 2024. With thousands of pieces still overseas, Cambodia’s relentless struggle continues against the most powerful figures in the art world today.
Tess Davis, a lawyer and archaeologist by training, is Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and protection of art, artifacts, and cultural pieces. She oversees the organization’s work to fight cultural racketeering and also manages the day-to-day operations of the institute’s staff in Washington, DC, as well as programs overseas. Since 2013, Davis has been affiliated with the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, at the University of Glasgow. She came to Scotland from the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation — a not-for-profit institution based in Washington, DC — where she was Executive Director until 2012. She previously worked for the nongovernmental organization Heritage Watch in Cambodia, first as Project Coordinator, and finally Assistant Director. Her career began at the Archaeological Institute of America.
Over the last decade, Davis has conducted extensive field research on the illicit trade in Cambodian antiquities, as well as legal research on the kingdom’s cultural property law. She also conceptualized and implemented a number of exciting projects in the country, including an exhibition at Angkor Wat about threats facing the temple, a hotline for the public to report archaeological discoveries or looting, and a children’s book entitled “If the Stones Could Speak.” From 2012-2014, she directed a legal internship program in Phnom Penh for international students from the Tulane-Siena Institute, who assist the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts with their legal needs. Davis has been a legal consultant for the Cambodian and US governments and works with both the art world and law enforcement to keep looted antiquities off the market. She writes and speaks widely on these issues — having been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, the Huffington Post, and various scholarly publications — and featured in documentaries.
Her co-panelist was Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, who is Professor of Law at the University of Athens, Greece, and the former President of the European Court of Human Rights. Moderating was Israr Khan, President of the Oxford Union, a 200-year-old debating society which draws much of its membership from the University of Oxford.
Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law.
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently spoke on “Child-Taking Justice and Forced Residential Schooling of Indigenous Americans” at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
Her presentation was part of a spring semester WashU Law International Law Colloquium organized by Professor MJ Durkee, who is the William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law and Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. Durkee joined that faculty in 2023, after serving as an Allen Post Professor, Associate Dean for International Programs, and Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law.
The discussant for Amann’s paper was Lecturer Steve Alagna, who is an enrolled citizen of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, and whose WashU Law Appellate Clinic just filed an amicus brief in federal appellate litigation which seeks redress, under the United States’ Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, for survivors of Indigenous children who died and were buried at a former residential school site.
Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. The paper she presented at WashU builds upon research that she published as “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024).
During his time in Florence, Kadri will expand his ongoing research pertaining to the legal and technical regulation of AI-generated “deepfakes” and focus on the European regulatory approaches to this topic. In 2024, Kadri authored his third book, Dilemmas in Digital Abuse, which discusses related topics including harmful technological advancements and the corresponding regulatory responses.
Kadri is an Assistant Professor of Law at Georgia Law Law, and his research focuses on torts and criminal law, with an emphasis on how technology, law, and social norms enable and affect privacy, speech, and abuse. His scholarship appears in journals including the Harvard Law Review Forum, UCLA Law Review, Texas Law Review, Utah Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and Journal of Free Speech Law and he has published shorter pieces in The New York Times and Slate. His course offerings include Torts, Cybercrime, and Regulating Digital Abuse.
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently gave a public lecture entitled “Child-Taking: Unlawful Transfer plus Identity Alteration, in Ukraine and Beyond,” at the University of Reading School of Law in Reading, United Kingdom, as part of that law school’s Global Law at Reading (GLAR) lecture series.
Her presentation drew upon her just-published article, “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024).
Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. This fall, she is spending a research-intensive semester in the United Kingdom, where she is a Research Visitor at the Oxford Faculty of Law Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and Visiting Fellow at Exeter College Oxford.
Amann discussed the significance of the warrants, which had charged Russia’s President and another Presidential official of the war crimes of child deportation, and which were issued just days before the 2023 Annual Meeting. The remarks spurred her to further research on the topic, resulting in her article “Child-Taking,” also published this month, at 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024) (prior post).
Also on the panel were: Professor Saira Mohamed, University of California-Berkeley School of Law; Professor Javier S. Eskauriatza, University of Nottingham Scholl of Law; and Professor Marko Milanović, University of Reading School of Law. Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law, moderated. The panelists’ remarks in full are here.
Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. She served from 2012 to 2021 as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict. This Fall 2024 semester she is at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, serving as a Research Visitor at the Faculty of Law Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and as a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College.
During this research-intensive semester Amann is pursuing her scholarship related to women professionals who played roles in international criminal trials after World War II and also her work on child rights, especially as they relate to armed conflict and similar violence.
Founded in 1314, Exeter College is the fourth-oldest among Oxford’s three dozen colleges. It is located in the city center next to the university’s Bodleian Library.
As theorized in the article, “child-taking” occurs when a state or similar powerful entity takes a child and then endeavors to alter, erase, or remake the child’s identity. It is a criminal phenomenon that has been repeated across decades and centuries. On rare occasion, criminal prosecutions have occurred, as with the Situation in Ukraine before the International Criminal Court. More often redress, if any, must take place in other forums. The article thus considers these other types of transitional justice, with particular attention to the legacies of forced residential schooling imposed upon Indigenous children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere.
Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. She served from 2012 to 2021 as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict.
Here’s the abstract of the “Child-Taking” article, the print version of which is available here:
A ruling group at times takes certain children out of their community and then tries to remake them in its image. It tries to rid the child of undesired differences, in ethnicity or nationality, religion or politics, race or ancestry, culture or class. There are too many examples: the colonialist residential schools that forced settler cultures on Indigenous children; the military juntas that kidnapped dissidents’ children; and today’s reports of abductions amid crises like that in Syria. Too often nothing is done, and the children are lost. But that may be changing, as the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) is seeking to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crimes of unlawfully deporting or transferring children from Ukraine to Russia.
“This article examines the criminal phenomenon that it names ‘child-taking.’ By its definition, the crime occurs when a state or similar powerful entity, first, takes a child, and second, endeavors, whether successfully or not, to alter, erase, or remake the child’s identity. Using the ICC case as a springboard, this article relies on historical and legal events to produce an original account of child-taking. Newly available trial transcripts help bring to life a bereft mother and five teenaged survivors, plus the lone woman defendant, who testified at a little-known child-kidnapping trial before a postwar Nuremberg tribunal. Their stories, viewed in the context of the evolution of international child law, inform this article’s definition. These sources further reveal child-taking to be what the law calls a matter of international concern. At its most serious, child-taking may constitute genocide or another crime within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Yet even if circumstances preclude punishment in that permanent criminal court, child-taking remains a grave offense warranting prosecution or other forms of local and global transitional justice. This is as true for the Indigenous children of residential schools in North America, Australia, and elsewhere, and for children in Syria and many other places in the world, as it is for the children of Ukraine.
