Symposium on Mann, Humanity at Sea

This interdisciplinary study engages law, history, and political theory in a first attempt to crystallize the lessons the global ‘refugee crisis’ can teach us about the nature of international law. It connects the dots between the actions of Jewish migrants to Palestine after WWII, Vietnamese ‘boatpeople’, Haitian refugees seeking to reach Florida, Middle Eastern migrants and refugees bound to Australia, and Syrian refugees currently crossing the Mediterranean, and then legal responses by states and international organizations to these movements. Through its account of maritime migration, the book proposes a theory of human rights modelled around an encounter between individuals in which one of the parties is at great risk. It weaves together primary sources, insights from the work of twentieth-century thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, and other legal materials to form a rich account of an issue of increasing global concern.

Author: Dr Itamar Mann (Senior Lecturer, University of Haifa, Faculty of Law)

Chair: Professor Panos Koutrakos (Professor of Eurpean Union Law, Jean Monnet Professor of European Law, City Law School, City University London)

Discussants: Professor Guy S. Goodwin-Gill (Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, Emeritus Professor of International Refugee Law, University of Oxford); Dr Hagar Kotef (Senior Lecturer of Political Theory and Comparative Politics, SOAS, University of London); Dr Ioannis Kalpouzos (Lecturer in Law, City Law School, City University London).

The symposium is next Wednesday, the 27th, from 6:00-7:30 at City University. Full information here. I will be out of town, unfortunately, but it should be a great event. Attend!