The Right of Self Determination: Ukraine

Join AIIA Queensland for a ``live webinar’’ with The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG on the topic The Peoples' Right of Self-Determination: Ukraine. We will be hosting an audience for this event at the University of Queensland St Lucia Campus. Our speaker will be joining us live on the big screen so our guests may ask him questions following his presentation.

If you are attending in person, please arrive at Room 116, Sir Llew Edwards Building, at 5.30pm for registration and drinks. This event will also be available online. After registering, on May 24 you will receive a follow-up confirmation email containing further details on how to join the webinar which will commence at 6pm AEST. If you have not received an email by early afternoon, please check your junk folder. This is event is free for AIIA members from all states. Non-members pay $10 and student non-members $5
About the event

The Hon. Michael Kirby, pictured, an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, has participated in several UN activities; including on Cambodia, North Korea, other post-conflict situations and human health crises.

In this talk he will revisit work on the expert group of UNESCO on the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination (1984-89). This grew out of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918), the Atlantic Charter (1943); the UN Charter (1945) and the ICCPR and ICESCR (1976). He will describe the conclusions on the meaning of ``Peoples’’, and how their ``right’’ could be achieved in the face of opposition. In the case of the aggression by the Russian Federation, a P5 Member of the Security Council, military action has broken out since 2014 involving Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and after February 2022, Ukraine proper to acquire, by force of arms, large parts of Ukraine, a nation state and a UN member country.

In so far as any explanation for its war has been advanced by Russia, it rests on the large Russian-speaking populations in the territory of Donbas in Eastern Ukraine. The danger of military operations, and especially ``tactical nuclear weapons’’, demands exploration of a peaceful solution. The question examined will be whether the 1989 report of the UNESCO expert group may offer solutions for the discovery of an urgent resolution of the current situation.

The speaker was President of NSW Court of Appeal 1984-96 and Justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009). However, he also undertook many appointments for agencies of the United Nations, most notably the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in DPRK (North Korea) (2013-14) and the UNSG’s High Level Panel on Health Technology, Innovation and Access (2015-16). The latter is also made urgent by the need for COVID vaccines in the least developed countries. The speaker’s thesis is that, only by seeking to understand Russian motivations for its war and return to the UN Charter, can a peaceful resolution be found.

In 1991, the Hon. Michael Kirby was awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal. In 1998, he was named Laurette of the UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education. In 2010 he was named co-winner of the Gruber Justice Prize. In 2011 he received the inaugural Australian Privacy Medal. The honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters, Doctor of Laws and Doctor of the University have been conferred on him by universities in Australia and overseas.

Видео The Right of Self Determination: Ukraine канала Australian Institute of International Affairs