Looking forward to taking part next month in a panel on children and armed conflict as part of International Law Weekend, the annual gathering in New York of international law practitioners, professors, and students. This year’s ILW will be held on October 24 at the House of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 West 44th Street, and October 25 and 26 at Fordham University School of Law, 140 West 62d Street. Primary sponsors are the American Branch of the International Law Association and the International Law Students Association.

The session entitled “Accounting for Children Affected by Armed Conflicts” will be at 9 a.m. on Friday, October 25. Here’s the description:

‘Despite the international community’s increasing focus on assigning individual responsibility for violations of international law in armed conflict settings, insufficient attention is paid to the children affected by such conflicts. This panel brings together distinguished experts for a moderated dialogue that will assess both current and alternative approaches to securing the rights and well-being of children affected by armed conflict. The dialogue will incorporate relevant perspectives from international human rights law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law.’

Joining me on that panel, to be moderated by George State Law Professor Jonathan Todres, the children’s rights expert who chairs the Section on Children and the Law of the Association of American Law Schools, will be:

► Leila Zerrougui (right), a longtime human rights lawyer who serves as the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. Yesterday Zerrougui – recently returned from a mission to Syria and surrounding countries to which Syrian children and their families have fled – gave an update on issues related to children and armed conflict to the Human Rights Council during its session at U.N. headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

► Mark A. Drumbl, Washington & Lee University Law Professor and author of Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law & Policy (2012), a must-read on the subject.

Mark and I are just two of many IntLawGrrls contributors scheduled to take part in panels during the 3-day event. As detailed in the full program, others include: Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor, International Criminal  Court; Karen E. Bravo, Indiana-Indianapolis; Elizabeth Burleson, Pace; Valerie Epps, Suffolk, and an ABILA Vice President; Molly Land, New York Law; Hope Lewis, Northeastern; Stephanie Ortoleva, WomenEnabled; Leila Nadya Sadat, Washington University, and an ABILA Vice President; Milena Sterio, Cleveland-Marshall; Jennifer Trahan, New York University; and Beth Van Schaack, U.S. State Department.

Panels will cover a range of issues in public and private international law. Among the many topics that caught my eye: another panel on children, entitled “The Globalization of Child Rights and Remedies”; the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty; cyberwarfare; the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; the inter-American human rights system; the Draft Convention for the Prevent and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity; head-of-state prosecutions at the International Criminal Court; the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations Law project; trials against suspected terrorists; and a host of careers panels.

Kudos to David Stewart (Georgetown), ABILA President-Elect, who helped organize mine and others’ panels, as well as other IntLawGrrls active in the leadership of sponsoring organizations – with ABILA, Kelly Dawn Askin (Open Society Justice Initiative), Andrea K. Bjorklund (McGill), Susan Tiefenbrun (Thomas Jefferson), and Ruth Wedgwood (Johns Hopkins); and with ILSA, Stephanie Farrior (Vermont) and Kaitlin Ball, my student at Georgia Law and this year’s ILSA Student President.

Details and registration here; full program here.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)