International Law and the Quest for Its' Implementation: Le Droit International Et La Quete De Sa Ise En Oeuvre

Abstract

On 30 August 2009 Vera Gowlland-Debbas retired from her professorial chair in international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Vera Gowlland-Debbas was closely associated with the Institute and its predecessor, the Graduate Institute of International Studies, as a student, then as a publications offi cer, and finally as a Professor, sharing with it all her brilliance, her openness, her dynamism and her very stimulating approach to international law. Vera personifi es the essential qualities that characterise the Institute where she studied and where, in turn, she taught later generations of students. Her perfect bilingualism, her interdisciplinary approaches, and her life in a multi-cultural milieu provide ample proof. The subjects that Vera chose to concentrate on throughout her career are at the very heart of international relations: the United Nations, respect of inter-national legality, refugee law, the rights of peoples in general, and those of the Palestinian people in particular. Inspired by the work of Michel Virally and of Georges Abi-Saab, her vision combined legal rules with existing realities in the furtherance of social ends.