Book launch: The United Nations and the question of Palestine
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Paul Webley Wing (PWW), Senate House, SOAS
- Room
- Alumni Lecture Theatre (SALT)
About this event
Contrary to conventional wisdom, there has been a continuing though vacillating gulf between the requirements of international law and the UN on the question of Palestine.
The United Nations and the Question of Palestine: Rule by Law and the Structure of International Legal Subalternity (CUP, 2023) explores the UN's management of the longest-running problem on its agenda, critically assessing tensions between the organization's position and international law. What forms has the UN's failure to respect international law taken, and with what implications?
The author critically interrogates the received wisdom regarding the UN's fealty to the international rule of law, in favour of what is described as an international rule by law. This book demonstrates that through the actions of the UN, Palestine and its people have been committed to a state of what the author calls 'international legal subalternity', according to which the promise of justice through international law is repeatedly proffered under a cloak of political legitimacy furnished by the international community, but its realization is interminably withheld.
Image: UN Photo / Elma Okic
About the speaker
Ardi Imseis is interested in the intersection of power, politics, law, and justice, and the practical impact of those phenomena on international relations in general and on underrepresented peoples in particular. He joined the Queen’s Faculty of Law in 2018, following a 12-year career as a UN official in the Middle East, first with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and then with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Professor Imseis’s scholarship has appeared in, inter alia, the American Journal of International Law, the Berkeley Journal of International Law, the Harvard International Law Journal, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and the University of British Columbia Law Review. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Third World Approaches to International Law Review. He is former Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (2008-2019).
Registration
This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Please note that seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
