Ambassador Christian Wenaweser will highlight the importance of international legal norms, the way in which international law is increasingly undermined, and show how states can respond at the United Nations. He will address examples including the ongoing aggression against Ukraine, measures taken against officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the role of international law in the conflict in the Middle East. In conversation with Dr. Wolfgang Danspeckgruber he will also shed light on further global crises and challenges.
About the Speakers
Mr. Christian Wenaweser, Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary has been the Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein to the United Nations in New York since 2002, making him the longest-serving permanent representative at the UN Headquarters and the doyen of the diplomatic corps. From 2020 to 2022, he led Liechtenstein’s efforts at the United Nations to reform the use of the veto in the Security Council (known as the ‘Veto Initiative’), which came to fruition when the General Assembly adopted a resolution by consensus in April 2022. Wenaweser has also been deeply involved in establishing the International Criminal Court, and chaired its Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression from 2004 to 2009, and from 2009 to 2011, he served as President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Other previously held functions include: President of the Meeting of States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (2006); Chairman of the Ad hoc Committee on the Scope of Legal Protection under the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel (2003-2005); Vice-Chair of the Open-Ended Working Group on Security Council Reform (2004-2005), and co-author with Amb. Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa of its June 2007 report; President of the Meeting of States Parties of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (2003); and Chairman of the Third Committee of the 57thsession of the General Assembly.
Ambassador Wenaweser joined the Permanent Mission of the Principality of Liechtenstein in New York in 1991. He was educated at Zurich University (literature, languages, history and philosophy) and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (diplomacy).
Dr. Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, D.Laws, is the Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University and Founding Chair of the Liechtenstein Colloquium, LCM.
Danspeckgruber and Wenaweser have worked closely on the Princeton Process of the Crime of Aggression – see also the resulting book The Princeton Process on the Crime of Aggression, 2003-2009 (edited with Stefan Barriga and Christian Wenaweser).
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