John Peters Humphrey Fellowship

My areas of interest include international dispute settlement, legal history, international investment law, and human rights. One focus of my research is how decisions of international courts and tribunals, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), should be interpreted. I argue that, much like treaties, their interpretation is governed by rules and principles which have yet to receive adequate scholarly attention. My work draws on experience at various courts, including the ICJ. Education: B.C.L./J.D., McGill University

Warzones are often imagined as lawless spaces, ruled solely by violence and uncertainty. Yet there is at least one sense in which this image is incomplete: dead bodies are an expected, unavoidable outcome of armed conflict, and their treatment is an essential feature of the laws of war. The Geneva Conventions are thus replete with rules on how to search for, collect, account for, identify, record, and return the mortal remains of those who perish in wartime, setting forth a robust set of obligations incumbent upon all parties to an armed conflict. A densely woven network of obligations thus covers the treatment of the war dead. But this coverage is not total. In the context of non-international armed conflict, there is no legal duty upon belligerents to return mortal remains. Such a duty exists for international armed conflicts, with warring countries expected to return the bodies of fallen soldiers to their respective homelands. But this duty does not extend to the warring factions of a non-international armed conflict, be they states or rebel groups. A Russian soldier who perishes at the hands of the Ukrainian army may have their body repatriated; a Sudanese combatant will be buried where they fell, with their families perhaps never learning of their fate. This is a dire humanitarian issue, one representing a genuine gap in international law. My research proposal seeks to narrow that gap. Although no treaty or customary norm of international law specifically mandates the return of mortal remains in the context of civil war, my claim is that such an obligation could be grounded in other, more general obligations contained in the laws of war and international human rights law. ​Education: BCL/JD, McGill University DEC, Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf

My research project aims to investigate and critically discuss current conceptual understandings on the right to reparation of human rights violations, and to what extent they can be actualized in the specific instance of the Yanomami people in Brazil. This will rely on a qualitative analysis of Yanomami perspectives on the concept of reparation. The right to reparations as a remedy to human rights violations is well established in International Law, from doctrinal, statutory, and case law perspectives. Notwithstanding, little attention has been paid in scientific papers on whether its implementation is empirically effective or not, and even less is available on practical examples involving Indigenous peoples in the Americas. I intend to begin to address this knowledge gap by offering an empirical critical reflection based on the case of the Yanomami. I hope to address practical and theoretical challenges to the design and implementation of reparation measures to cases that involve Indigenous peoples, by contrasting conceptual foundations of the rights to reparation with aspirations of the Yanomami on what they understand is required for effective reparations to be achieved in practice. My research seeks to bridge the distance between the right to reparation in theoretical terms and its culturally adequate implementation in ways meaningful to the Yanomami. In doing so, I also seek to contribute to the scholarly literature that more deeply explores the translation between Western-European and Indigenous socio-legal concepts and institutions.​​​ Education: M.A., Columbia University Bachelor Law, University of São Paulo