Edmund Burke Fellowship Convenes in C-FAM UN Office

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

NEW YORK, January 11 (C-FAM) The academic week of the Edmund Burke Fellowship met this week in C-FAM’s New York office. Named for the 18th century statesman and political theorist, the Fellowship brings together graduate students in law and international relations to hear lectures and attend meetings with UN bureaucrats and diplomats.

The crop of ten Fellows this year came from the United States, Canada, Jamaica and Venezuela. They heard lectures from Professor Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason University School of Law, Professor Paolo Carozza of Notre Dame School of Law, former U.S. Ambassador to East Timor Joseph Rees and Piero Tozzi of Alliance Defending Freedom. The Fellows also met with diplomats from the Russian, U.S. and Holy See Missions to the United Nations.

The purpose of the Fellowship is to identity and equip promising students who may one day work in the fields of international law and international relations and defend the unborn child, the family and national sovereignty.

In his lecture Professor Rabkin contrasted the aspirational nature of international human rights law with the specific obligations of national laws that are backed by taxpayer-funded enforcement systems with police forces, courts, and prisons.  To the American citizen, “international human rights law is a way of abstracting from the circumstances,” Professor Rabkin warned.

Ambsassador Joseph Rees, who besides being the first US Ambassador to East Timor was also U.S. Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, discussed the history behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the practical realities of international diplomacy.  He stressed that the concept of human rights is not a novel invention, but an aspect of the tradition of natural law with a history extending over a thousand years.

Professor Carozza gave students an insider’s look at regional human rights bodies.  He said that the Inter-American Court’s decision in Murillo v. Costa Rica was, “by a considerable measure, the worst decision on the protection of embryonic human life ever issued an international court. Essentially, they decided that embryos are not persons within the meaning of the American Convention on Human Rights, notwithstanding the language of article four of that treaty that protects life from the moment conception.”  The decision, handed down just weeks ago, found against Costa Rica’s prohibition of in vitro fertilization which the country said was necessary to protect embryonic human life. Carozza also refuted the claim, erroneously made by some on both sides of the abortion debate, that the Inter-American Commission declared Nicaragua’s 2006 ban on abortion to be a violation of international human rights law. Carozza served on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights from 2006-2010, presiding over the body for one years.

The intensive schedule of meetings, lectures, and assigned readings culminated in a series of presentations by the Fellows introducing the topics of the papers they will prepare to write, aiming to use their scholarship to advance the defense of life in areas where international law is being used to erode it.  “I’m hoping some of you will really catch fire and want to continue this work professionally,” said C-FAM president Austin Ruse as he welcomed the Fellows.

The program’s focus is defense of life in the context of international law, according to Stefano Gennarini, the Director of C-FAM’s Center for Legal Studies.  “We’re working to restore the integrity of human rights project, which has been undermined by efforts to hijack it.”

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