Mock Diplomatic Negotiation (Monday, 2nd & 3rd periad)
(International Environmental Law & Multirateral Treaty Negotiation)
Mr. Rene Lefeber, Legal Counsel of International Law Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Netherlands, gave a special seminar on “Multilateral Treaty Negotiations” on 15 February 2008. He is the real Co-Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group of Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress in the Context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, on which we based our mock multilateral environmental negotiation class in the fall semester 2007. In the real diplomatic negotiation, Mr. Lefeber actively provides leadership in and coordination for the very difficult negotiations on the liability regarding GMOs, on its biosafety the international opinions are severely divided.
Mr. Lefeber is not only a diplomat engaged in multilateral environmental negotiations, but also an international law professor at the University of Amsterdam with a lot of academic publications. Actually, he is one of the most active negotiators in this field.
 |
In this special seminar, students involved in the mock negotiation class, “Multilateral Treaty Negotiation,” gave a brief presentation. They summarized their long hard work and explained the detail of their final outcome of the negotiation, referring to the adopted document. |
In this class each student played a delegation of important Party to the Cartagena Protocol. Even in the mock negotiation, stuents-delegations were really divergent on almost all issues and the adoption of the final text was an uneasy compromises. Listening to this, Mr. Lefeber was impressed by the work done by the students and told us his invaluable experiences in negotiating and chairing the international environmental treaties. |
 |
 |
In addition, Mr. Lefeber answered many questions posed by the students regarding the legal issues involved in the “liability and redress” negotiations. |
He friendly responded to casual questions from students during coffee break. Students attended to this special class have divergent carrier plans (e.g. diplomats, international civil servants, researchers, etc.), and he gave advices and told what he had in mind when he was young to be an international “negotiator.” |
 |
7 students among the participants in this special seminar actually attended the fourth meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Liability and Redress held in Montreal, Canada in October 2007. They attended the meeting as a part of International Fieldwork, with credits. In addition, 4 students will also attend in the upcoming fifth meeting to be held in Cartagena, Columbia, in March 2008. These students were really excited to see the Co-Chair who, in the real negotiating meetings, is usually a person beyond reach. This special seminar and the International Fieldwork were a great opportunity for motivated students to feel and understand “how to use international law in the real world.” Finally we would like to thank Mr. Lefeber for coming to Kobe and gave us this most interesting seminar for us.
Contact Me