School of Law

Staff

Biography
Jean Allain is a generalist in public international law with a specialisation in human rights and an expertise in issues of slavery and trafficking.

He was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University of Belfast in August 2004. He completed his studies at HEI – Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales – the Graduate Institute for International Studies of the University of Geneva in 2000. He wrote his Master’s thesis at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in San José, Costa Rica, as a Fellow of the Organization of American States. While undertaking graduate studies in Geneva, he spent six months in The Hague, as a law clerk at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where he clerked for both the Deputy Registrar and the President of the Tribunal. In 1998, he was appointed Lecturer in Public International Law at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. In 2000, he became Assistant Professor; in 2004, Associate Professor.

In 2008, Dr. Allain was appointed Extraordinary Lecturer, Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Dr. Allain has published in a number of leading international journals including the European Journal of International Law, International Journal of Refugee Law, and Human Rights Quarterly. He is author of The Slavery Conventions: The Travaux Préparatoires of the 1926 League of Nations Convention and the 1956 United Nations Convention (2008), International Law in the Middle East: Closer to Power than Justice (2004), A Century of International Adjudication: The Rule of Law and its Limits (2000), and editor Unlocking the Middle East: The Writings of Richard Falk (2003).

Jean Allain is a member of the International Editorial Board of the African Journal of Human Rights Law; is Editor of the Irish Yearbook of International Law and the host of the International Law Video Library. Dr. Allain is an alumnus of both The Hague Academy of International Law and the Academy of European Law.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Public International Law
  

Postgraduate

• Humanitarian Law (Conflict Regulations)
• European Convention on Human Rights and Current Issues
• Human Rights and Exploitation (Slavery and Trafficking)

Research

Public International Law, Human Rights Law, Slavery and Trafficking.

Selected Publications

The Slavery Conventions: The Travaux Préparatoires of the 1926 League of Nations Convention and the 1956 United Nations Convention (Martinus Nijhoff, 2008), 816 pp;

“A Vindication of Palestinian Rights: The Written Statement Submitted by Palestine and the Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, Palestine Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 13, 2007 pp. 109-132;

“Slavery and the League of Nations: Ethiopia as a Civilised Nation”, (2006) 8 Journal of the History of International Law 213;

“Derogation from the European Convention of Human Rights in light of ‘Other Obligations under International Law'” (2005) 11 European Human Rights Law Review 480;

“The True Challenge to the United Nations System of the Use of Force: The Failures of Kosovo and Iraq and the Emergence of the African Union”, (2004) 8 Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 237 ; and

International Law in the Middle East: Closer to Power than Justice (Ashgate, 2004) 353 pp.

Administration
Postgraduate co-ordinator 2008 - present