On Friday 27 October Ioannis Konstantinidis, Assistant Professor of International Law at Qatar University, will give a guest lecture entitled “Human Rights Interstate Communications before Human Rights Treaty bodies: a tale from a practitioner”. The lecture will be held in the framework of the course “Peace, Sovereignty and International Organization” taught by Assistant Professor Antonia Zervaki. The lecture will focus on inter-State communications before human rights treaty bodies. Emphasis will be placed a) on the relevant procedures before the Committee established by the Convention on the Elimination of All Form of Racial Discrimination (CERD); b) on the first inter-State communications ever brought before human rights treaty bodies (Qatar v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar v. United Arab Emirates, CERD Committee); and (c) the prospects for the use of this process in Southeastern Europe.

Ioannis Kostaninidis (BA NKUA, MA IEP de Paris-Sciences Po, LLM & PhD Universite Paris 1 Panthe on – Sorbonne/E cole de Droit de la Sorbonne) is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Qatar University, College of Law and Affiliate Member of the Center for Law and Development. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (University of Cambridge) and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. He has taught international law and international dispute settlement, inter alia, at the Prince Saud Al-Faisal Institute for Diplomatic Studies (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), the International Foundation for the Law of the Sea (Germany), Kobe University (Japan) and the University of Athens (Greece).
Dr. Konstantinidis regularly acts for States, international organizations and private entities in contentious and advisory matters. He is currently involved as counsel in three cases before the International Court of Justice and in investor-State arbitrations. His research and practice focus on law of the sea and natural resources, land and maritime boundaries, deep seabed mining, international organizations, international investment law, international litigation and arbitration, international environmental law and sustainable development, human rights, and international humanitarian law. Dr. Konstantinidis is listed as arbitrator on the Asian International Arbitration Centre (AIAC) and the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration panels of arbitrators. He has recently been nominated on the List of Arbitrators under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea by the Republic of Madagascar (the list is drawn up and kept by the Secretary-General of the United Nations).