46 min
#15: War crimes and trauma in Ukraine and the effectiveness of international humanitarian law with Belkis Wille, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch Bariscope
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- Politics
*timestamps below*
Bariscope is back with three great episodes! It’s an honour and pleasure to have a very special guest to kick off this third season: Belkis Wille, Senior researcher in the crisis and conflict division at Human Rights Watch. She has been reporting in Ukraine on the killings, torture and enforced disappearances in areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv as well as the siege of Mariupol in March 2022.
We will talk about the horrible first months of the war in Ukraine, how human rights watch operates in such a context and then hear Belkis' take on how this war compares to the crisis in Yemen and how international humanitarian law can have an impact.
A little more on Belkis: she grew up in Switzerland, moved to the US to complete a bachelor degree in government at Harvard university followed by a master in human rights and humanitarian law at the University of Essex in 2011. After her studies Belkis worked in Geneva at the World Organization against Torture as a human rights officer for the Middle East and for North Africa and then shortly after, joined Human Rights Watch – at age 24. Before starting her current role, she worked as Human Rights Watch’s senior Iraq researcher and published extensively on ISIS and before that was the Kuwait, Qatar and Yemen researcher, based in Sanaa. We hope you learn as much as we did!
Stay critically curious,
Lea & Lukas
This conversation was recorded mid-May 2022, we encourage you to check out the website from human rights watch for more recent information as well as Belkis’ Twitter account (she has over 18’000 followers!).
Human Rights Watch Ukraine: https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/ukraine
Belkis Wille Twitter: https://twitter.com/belkiswille?lang=en
Timestamps
- 02:50: What for procedures kicked in at Human Rights Watch (HRW) following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022?
- 06:50: How come HRW prepared for the war but our governments did not really?
- 09:25: How Belkis’ HRW mission operated during the first few weeks of the war
- 10:25: How do you interview survivors and witnesses of war crimes as a human rights lawyer without retraumatizing them?
- 14:00: Concrete techniques that Belkis uses when interviewing victims of war
- 16:00: How does HRW stay accountable to the people they interview?
- 18:00: How is the Ukraine war different in terms of the prosecution of war crimes compared to Syria or Yemen?
- 19:20: What for violations are being examined/prosecuted in Ukraine? (short explanation on the intricacies of international humanitarian law)
- 22:11: Belkis’ Research Report in Mariupol following two weeks of siege and the testimonies she gathered
- 28:00: The tragedy of elderly people and people with disabilities being the least mobile and thus stuck in situations of armed conflicts
- 29:35: The differences Belkis has observed when covering Ukraine compared to Yemen. How come the war in Yemen has been so silenced?
- 35:18: Is international human rights protection today in a better place than 10 years ago?
- 38:59: Our guest’s dream of becoming a human rights lawyer when she was 10 years old
- 42:07: Three tips to your 20 year-old self?
*timestamps below*
Bariscope is back with three great episodes! It’s an honour and pleasure to have a very special guest to kick off this third season: Belkis Wille, Senior researcher in the crisis and conflict division at Human Rights Watch. She has been reporting in Ukraine on the killings, torture and enforced disappearances in areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv as well as the siege of Mariupol in March 2022.
We will talk about the horrible first months of the war in Ukraine, how human rights watch operates in such a context and then hear Belkis' take on how this war compares to the crisis in Yemen and how international humanitarian law can have an impact.
A little more on Belkis: she grew up in Switzerland, moved to the US to complete a bachelor degree in government at Harvard university followed by a master in human rights and humanitarian law at the University of Essex in 2011. After her studies Belkis worked in Geneva at the World Organization against Torture as a human rights officer for the Middle East and for North Africa and then shortly after, joined Human Rights Watch – at age 24. Before starting her current role, she worked as Human Rights Watch’s senior Iraq researcher and published extensively on ISIS and before that was the Kuwait, Qatar and Yemen researcher, based in Sanaa. We hope you learn as much as we did!
Stay critically curious,
Lea & Lukas
This conversation was recorded mid-May 2022, we encourage you to check out the website from human rights watch for more recent information as well as Belkis’ Twitter account (she has over 18’000 followers!).
Human Rights Watch Ukraine: https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/ukraine
Belkis Wille Twitter: https://twitter.com/belkiswille?lang=en
Timestamps
- 02:50: What for procedures kicked in at Human Rights Watch (HRW) following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022?
- 06:50: How come HRW prepared for the war but our governments did not really?
- 09:25: How Belkis’ HRW mission operated during the first few weeks of the war
- 10:25: How do you interview survivors and witnesses of war crimes as a human rights lawyer without retraumatizing them?
- 14:00: Concrete techniques that Belkis uses when interviewing victims of war
- 16:00: How does HRW stay accountable to the people they interview?
- 18:00: How is the Ukraine war different in terms of the prosecution of war crimes compared to Syria or Yemen?
- 19:20: What for violations are being examined/prosecuted in Ukraine? (short explanation on the intricacies of international humanitarian law)
- 22:11: Belkis’ Research Report in Mariupol following two weeks of siege and the testimonies she gathered
- 28:00: The tragedy of elderly people and people with disabilities being the least mobile and thus stuck in situations of armed conflicts
- 29:35: The differences Belkis has observed when covering Ukraine compared to Yemen. How come the war in Yemen has been so silenced?
- 35:18: Is international human rights protection today in a better place than 10 years ago?
- 38:59: Our guest’s dream of becoming a human rights lawyer when she was 10 years old
- 42:07: Three tips to your 20 year-old self?
46 min