Richard Falk visit to NZ

Professor Richard Falk, who recently completed a six-year term as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, will deliver a public lecture in Dunedin on Monday 10 November.

Falk, a Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, is a recognized world expert on the laws of war, human rights and international order. He was appointed to the UN role in 2008, where his frequently outspoken criticism of Israeli policies towards Palestine, and the US-led war on terror, particularly the invasion of Iraq, led to some criticism of his appointment and accusations that he was not impartial or objective.

Professor Falk combines his academic expertise in international law with political activism in a role he describes as being a “citizen pilgrim”. He states that in all his work, his “overriding concern is to foster an abolitionist movement against war and aggression as social institutions, which implies the gradual construction of a new world order that assures basic human needs of all people, that safeguards the environment, that protects the fundamental human rights of all individuals and groups without encroaching upon the precarious resources of cultural diversity, and that works toward the non-violent resolution of intersocietal conflicts.”

Professor Falk’s talk is entitled “Prospects for Peace in the Middle East”. His visit has been arranged by the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Aotearoa New Zealand Peace and Conflict Studies Centre Trust.

He will deliver the same lecture on Thursday 6 November. He will also give the annual Dorothy Brown Memorial Lecture on Friday 7 November, entitled “Looking back on World War One a hundred years later”.

The Dunedin lecture is on Monday 10 November at 5.15pm in the Burns 1 Lecture Theatre.

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