As the 79th Session of the United Nations Sixth Committee (Legal) convened this month, a team of WashU Law students was in the room, watching and documenting the world’s progress toward a formal treaty—akin to those concerning Genocide or War Crimes—on Crimes Against Humanity.
WashU Law Professor Leila Sadat, director and founder of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, has long worked with world leaders to confront the reality that, within the scope of international law, a glaring gap exists regarding how to address Crimes Against Humanity. She has been at the forefront of the drafting and negotiation processes related to this future treaty, and the 79th Session’s discussions were particularly historic because the Sixth Committee will now decide whether to move towards a formal convention.
To rally States and non-governmental organizations to support the convention, Prof. Sadat attended the 79th Session with students Andrea Charles, Zej Moczydlowski, Mina Nur Basmaci, and Tariq Rajei. The team attended sessions in the Trusteeship Council Chamber, listening through the UN’s live-interpretation system when necessary and closely annotating states’ positions and their impressions of each speaker.
Additionally, the team met with delegates from the Gambia, Mexico, Russia, the United States, the State of Palestine, Poland, Türkiye, Human Rights Watch, the Atlantic Council, Global Justice Center, and many other states and non-governmental organizations. They also attended a variety of meetings, such as a pre-Session forum at the Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations, the American Society of International Law Gala celebrating Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, and a discussion hosted by the Global Justice Center and Outright International on the need for UN action in defense of LGBTQ peoples. The lattermost panel included notable WashU Law alumna Kelly Adams, a former member of Prof. Sadat’s team.
To help the UN team document the positions of individual nations and assist in gathering support for the treaty, other students from Prof. Sadat’s team—Mood Al-Kurdi, Faryal Ashraf, Markus Baldermann, Taylor Burbridge, Sophie Crain, Olivia Dieterich, Genevieve Fried, Marissa Land, Erin Layne, and David Ries—watched online and documented the statements of 102 speakers representing 142 states. The virtual team, some even observing from abroad in Madrid and the Hague, worked in shifts throughout long multiple-day sessions, tirelessly creating hundreds of pages of notes with which to further assist the Initiative in fighting for a treaty.
A final analysis is still forthcoming. However, the team is optimistic because at the end of the 79th Session, with 142 states having spoken, they heard 122 states—approximately 86%—supported moving towards a formal convention, with another 7 remaining neutral. These raw numbers demonstrated significant progress: a nearly nine-fold increase in support over the last ten years and a 10% increase from the last estimates in 2023.
Although the full team is finally back in Saint Louis, the work has only begun. They now must discuss differing interpretations of statements, analyze hundreds of pages of notes, and create precise data sets. The hope is to better understand and address the individual concerns of the United Nations’ 193 member states and assist the Initiative in the creation of an international mechanism that will garner consensus, create clear law, and both prevent and punish Crimes Against Humanity.
Tariq Rajei (2L), Mina Nur Basmaci (3L), Andrea Charles (3L), Zej Moczydlowski (3L), Douglas Pivnichny (WashU Law ’13, UN Legal Officer, Codification Division), Professor Leila Sadat, and Kelly Adams (WashU Law ’22, Legal Advisor, Global Justice Center) at the Non-Violence statue in the central United Nations plaza.
