Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who has been among The Atlantic’s Brave Thinkers and one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, presented the thirty-third Owen M. Kupferschmid Memorial Lecture at BC Law on April 7.
The Owen M. Kupferschmid Holocaust/Human Rights Project (HHRP) is named after its founder, a 1986 Boston College Law School graduate. Launched in 1984, the project’s goal was to ensure that the precedential value of Holocaust-related law is fully realized and applied to state-sponsored human rights violations today. The project also organizes conferences and events, including the annual memorial lecture, to address specific legal issues related to the Holocaust and other human rights violations.
Moreno-Ocampo was invited in part because of his role as the first Chief Prosecutor of the permanent International Criminal Court, based at The Hague (June 2003-June 2012). His office was involved in 20 of the most serious crises of the 21st century, including Iraq, Korea, Afghanistan, and Palestine. He conducted investigations in seven different countries, among them Libya and Sudan.
In 2012, the World Bank appointed Moreno-Ocampo to lead an expert panel to examine an alleged corruption conspiracy related to a $3 billion project in Bangladesh. He previously assisted in the transition to democracy in Argentina, was the deputy Prosecutor in the Junta trial there, and led investigations into military rebellions and cases of public corruption.
He leads the global practice of Getnick & Getnick LLP as the law firm’s Global Practice Counsel.
Moreno-Ocampo is one of a long list of auspicious HHRP speakers, the most recent of whom was last year’s León Rodríguez ’88, then director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.