The 1st ‘Advanced Academy on International Studies in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law’ on Robben Island, Cape Town (S.A.)

Extract

“ROBBEN ISLAND IS A VERY SPECIAL PLACE in the new South Africa. No one in South Africa [and few elsewhere] refuses an invitation to come here“; with these words Justice Pius Langa, Vice-President of the South African Constitutional Court, aptly alluded to the symbolic significance of the place chosen as the venue for this first International Human Rights Academy. Indeed, it turned out to be quite an ingenuine idea on part of the Academy's organisers -namely Prof. Jeremy Sarkin from the University of Western Cape (UWC), Prof. Leo Zwaak from Utrecht University, and Prof. Johan Vande Lannotte from Ghent University, as well as Prof. Asbjorn Eide from the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights- to bring, for the first time ever, thirty-five participants from twenty-two countries to the place where Nelson Mandela served eighteen of his 27-years in prison and about which one of his fellow inmates, Ahmed Kathrada, who is now the Chairperson of the Robben Island Council, said that “we [the ex-prisoners] would want Robben Island to reflect the triumph of freedom and human dignity over oppression and humiliation, of courage and determination over weakness, of a new South Africa over the old”. As such, it was, perhaps, the ideal place to devote a good two-and-a-half-weeks (from April 3 to 20) to human rights in all their shades and colours.