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An Expert of International Criminal Law at Bocconi

, by Elisa Bazzani
Paola Gaeta is to enter the Department of Legal Studies as an Adjunct Professor

Already a Visiting Professor during academic year 2014-2015, on 1 September Paola Gaeta will join the faculty of the Department of Legal Studies as an Adjunct professor. An expert of International Criminal Law and of International Humanitarian Law, starting from September Gaeta will also be the Director of the Law Department of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

In 2012 Gaeta, who collaborated extensively with Antonio Cassese, founded the Antonio Cassese Initiative for Justice, Peace and Humanity. In this framework, Gaeta gave birth to a human rights training project for magistrates in Burkina Faso and to a Summer School in Transitional justice, post-conflict and human rights at the University of Geneva.

Gaeta is also one of the coordinators of The 1949 Geneva Conventions in Context. A commentary, an extensive work (more than 1.700 pages and over 45 contributors) that is to be published in October by Oxford University Press. "We have been working on this project for almost five years. Apart from the four volumes published in the 50s by the International Committee of the Red Cross, this edition represents the first commentary on the Geneva conventions. Its values lies in the interpretation of humanitarian law in the light of today's major issues – refugees, the fight against terrorism, the question of unlawful combatants, the classification of armed conflicts, to make a few examples", explains Gaeta.

Once at Bocconi, Gaeta will continue to teach the course Civil Liberties and Human Rights and to organize seminars for the series Bocconi Insights: global challenges and threats. International law in an interdisciplinary perspective: "The conferences I coordinated last year addressed the topics of the Islamic State, of Ebola and of immigration. Protection of the privacy in the digital age is probably going to be next. Other than that, I suppose I will continue my piano studies, which I have been grappling with for a couple of years now!"