Plan B for Human Rights: the network of “Magnitsky laws”

Geoffrey Robertson QC Book Launch | Plan B for Human Rights: the network of “Magnitsky laws”?

Thursday 1st April | 6pm - 7pm

Join Amal Clooney, Geoffrey Robertson and Bill Browder to launch Mr Robertson’s new book on a “Plan B for Human Rights”: the network of “Magnitsky laws” that have just become available in the UK and EU, and for some years in the US, to name, blame and shame human rights violators and to provide a measure of punishment and deterrence through imposing travel and financial restrictions. The advent of these targeted sanctions, based on international law principles but imposing punishments by force of national law, offers a way forward at a time when plan ‘A’ – the International Criminal Court – has been stalled by superpower rivalry in the UN Security Council and has mainly been focused on brutal warlords in Central Africa.

This is the first book to explain the history, current status (in 31 countries) and future possibilities of Magnitsky legislation, both as an opportunity for human rights defenders to bring abusers to account and for open societies to enforce their values by ostracising the cruel and the corrupt. Robertson argues that Magnitsky listings are particularly appropriate for the modern “train-drivers to Auschwitz” – lickspittle judges and prosecutors who abandon impartiality to do the bidding of authoritarian regimes, and for Western companies which profit from slave labour abroad. He shows how human rights NGOs and their counsel can use these new laws to pressure governments to take action against violators. The book argues that the development of a co-ordinated Magnitsky network is an important way for liberal democracies to fight back against the apparatchiks of authoritarianism.

This webinar, co-hosted with Intelligence Squared, will be of interest to all concerned about international affairs and human rights. Bill Browder was the client of Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow tax lawyer tortured and killed for exposing state criminality. In his memory, Browder persuaded John McCain and then President Obama to support the first Magnitsky act in the US. Geoffrey Robertson has been his counsel, and is a former UN appeal judge and author 20 years ago of “Crimes Against Humanity – The Struggle for Global Justice” – a book which was credited with influencing a global justice movement. Amal Clooney is a distinguished human rights lawyer, having acted for victims – especially journalists – of repressive regimes. She authored the recent International Bar Association’s report on “The Use of Targeted Sanctions to Protect Journalists”.

To order Bad People for £15 (20% discount), click here.

Watch the recording below.