Jeff Fischer sat on a panel today at the ASIL’s Annual Meeting here in Washington to discuss Elections and Ethnic Violence. The panel addressed how international institutions that oversee elections around the world have not developed a standard approach to anticipating, preventing and responding to election based violence. A renowned international expert on elections, Fischer is the lead author of the timely USAID-supported Technical Guidance Handbook on Electoral Security and the accompanying Electoral Security Assessment Framework which was published last year.

Today’s panel held at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington brought together experts from government and civil society to assess and respond to the May 2010 UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions’ on election related violence and killings and to identify core issues requiring attention from academics to policy-makers. In addition to Fischer, other panelists were: Peter Bartu, University of California, Bekeley; Susan Benesch, World Policy Institute; Chidi Odinkala, Open Society Justice Initiative. Sarah Knuckey from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University moderated the panel.

With over a century of tradition and experience behind it, ASIL’s Annual Meeting has become the most important gathering in the field of international law. Plus que 1,000 practitioners, universitaires, and students travel to Washington, CC, each spring from all over the world to debate and discuss the latest developments in their field. This year’s Annual Meeting theme focused on « Harmony & Dissonance in International Law. »