ACTIVITIES & EVENTS
ACTIVITIES & EVENTS
The Asia Justice Coalition works as a collective to amplify our members’ initiatives and their
efforts to advance international justice and human rights in Asia. We, therefore, provide
aggregated and updated information and news on the Coalition’s projects, activities and events.
The Asia Justice Coalition works as a collective to amplify our members’ initiatives and their
efforts to advance international justice and human rights in Asia. We, therefore, provide
aggregated and updated information and news on the Coalition’s projects, activities and events.
From 24 July – 8 August 2023, the Asia Justice Coalition and OpinioJuris curated a virtual symposium titled: ‘Ljubljana – The Hague Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance: Critical Reflections';. Following the two-week diplomatic negotiations in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in May 2024, the States adopted the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.
The symposium provided an opportunity to assess what we have learned from this convention – the process as well as the final outcome – and to ascertain what this means, not just for the future of this convention, but for other initiatives relating to international accountability.
This symposium has been curated to include perspectives from participants who were in Ljubljana and contributed to the discussions at the negotiating table. In addition to states, there were civil society ‘observers’, who, per the rules of the conference, played an extremely active role in the discussions – at the plenary sessions as well as in the working groups. The majority of the contributions to this symposium are from representatives of civil society who played an invaluable part in influencing the final shape of the treaty.
The legal issues that surfaced and that had to be vigorously defended were the scope of the treaty, victims’ rights, aut dedere aut judicare, to name a few. In Ljubljana, there was also a concerted effort by some states to water down the treaty text, and had these efforts succeeded, this would have had serious ramifications, far beyond the MLA Treaty.
In this symposium, some of the topics our contributors tackle are:
The prospects and potential of the MLAT in relation to international accountability writ large;
The scope of the Convention;
Aut dedere aut judicare;
Victims’ rights (including the right to reparation and the role of asset recovery);
Role of civil society;
Next steps – ratification and adoption of the treaty.
The symposium witnessed 11 posts by 14 contributors. They included AJC’s Executive Director, Priya Pillai, and Senior Law and Policy Advisor, Jennifer Keene-McCann, as well as members of academia and civil society, namely, Vaios Koutroulis, Raquel Saavedra, Lina Baddour, Pamela Capizzi, Hugo Relva, Bruno Biazatti, Ezéchiel Amani Cirimwami, Julie Bardèche, Danaé van der Straten Ponthoz, Leanna Burnard, and Frederika Schweighoferova.
Read all contributions to the symposium here.