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Many of you in this room have been reading in the

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papers over the last few days about what's going on in Syria.

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And probably you are as appalled as anyone else

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of the images of mass killing on all sides,

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of the taking of innocent life of children, women,

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completely defenseless people.

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And you're probably asking yourselves:

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"Why isn't anything being done to stop it?"

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I want to talk a little bit about the system of international rules

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that allows you to begin to answer that question.

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And I want to do it by reference to a case to have come to,

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as I conclude, that took place ultimately in the Houses of Parliament.

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The judgment given in November 1998

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in a case that many of you would be familiar with involving

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senator Augusto Pinochet. Decisive moment that goes

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very closely to the kinds of issues we're talking about

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when we ask the question:

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"Why isn't president Assad being stopped from killing?"

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I work as an international lawyer. You've probably have

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heard about international law. You probably don't know

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a huge amount about what international law is.

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It's traditionally described as the rules that govern

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the relations between states.

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I wake up in the morning, I switch on my computer,

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I have emails about the sort of cases and issues that I'm involved in:

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the protection of human rights in the former Yugoslavia, the cases of Vukovar;

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the right to return of the Chagossians to the Island of Chagos,

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part of the decolonization problems involving

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the United Kingdom and a load of other cases.

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And classically the world that I deal with,

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is a world between states,

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it's a world which governs relations between

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the two hundred or so countries that occupy the world.

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If you were to step back from this planet, jump up to the moon,

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and look at how we organize ourselves

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you'd think it's pretty weird.

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We've divided ourselves into about two hundred countries

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and the basic idea of international law is that

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within those two hundred countries -- and it used to be

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only forty or fifty in the 18th and 19th centuries --

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states, governments are free to do whatever they want

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to their citizens.

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They can torture them, they can kill them,

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they can disappear them,

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they can adopt rules saying that, you know:

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"every female over the age of sixty is going to be killed,"

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"every male under the age of fifteen is going to be killed."

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The classic rules of international law are premised on

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the concept of sovereignty, the power -- absolute power of the state.

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That changed dramatically in the 20th century

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and it's the idea that is at the heart of that change,

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the idea that finally gives a role and a place for an individual

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that is at the heart of the answer to the question that I posed at the outset

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and that dominates the answer to that question.

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It's the one that I want you to think about.

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What happened? We know about the atrocities in Stalin's Soviet Union.

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We know about the atrocities in Germany

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and in many occupied countries in the '30s and in the '40s

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and the argument of the government of those countries

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at the time was: "Well, we may have domestic rules

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that limit what we can do but there's no rule of

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international law that stops the killing."

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Individuals have no rights.

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A very small number of people in the middle part of the 20th century

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started developing the idea that actually individuals did have rights.

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And the rights of individuals were exercisable against state.

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For the first time, ever, the very recent idea

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an individual could stand up and say:

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"You Mr President are not allowed to do that.

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You are subject to constraints, not the constraints of

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your domestic legal order but the constraints of

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your international legal order."

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And that's what culminated in the creation of instruments

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that many of you are very familiar with:

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the Universal Declaration on Human Rights,

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the European Convention on Human Rights and then

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other instruments that emerged in the late 1990s like

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-- also in 1998 the year of the Pinochet case,

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the statute of the International Criminal Court.

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In fact that was the year that was vital for another reason,

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in that same year - 1998 - for the first time ever,

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for the first time in human history, a serving head of state

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was indicted by an international court:

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Slobodan Milošević. It had never happened before.

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Now that is a vital change. A change which is premised on

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the very simple idea that individuals have rights against their state.

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That was a development that was hard fought for

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and which, I have to say right now, is under challenge

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and under threat. Why? Well, many of you remember

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the events of September 11th

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and with the events of September 11th a number of governments

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that had been at the heart of promoting the idea that

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"every human person has rights", an idea reflected for the

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first time in a very obscure document called

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the 'Atlantic Charter' adopted in 1941 by Churchill and

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Roosevelt, that idea that "every individual has rights,

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whoever they are, wherever they may be, in whatever

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circumstance they may find themselves in" is now under

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threat from those who promoted the very idea.

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Why is it under threat? Well, many of you are familiar with

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the stories about banging people up because they are alleged

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to be terrorists and holding them without charge

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indefinitely for the rest of their lives -- I wrote a book about that.

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About and individual Mohammed al-Qahtani arrested in

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2002 still detained at Guantanamo, has not being charged,

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has no release date and it appears will be held for the rest

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of his natural life because of a 'so called' war on terror.

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You're familiar with the idea of "drones", the idea that

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all of a sudden because we are 'at war'

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we are free as a nation,

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or as Americans, to define individuals who pose

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a threat to our society and just take them out.

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Other people call that extrajudicial killing.

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It's done in Afghanistan and it's extended beyond the war-zone

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to places like Pakistan and to places like Yemen.

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Well, if you are going to take people out

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because they are alleged Al Qaeda individuals in Pakistan

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why not do it in Edgware? Where do the limits stop?

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When you start deciding you are simply going to eliminate those

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individuals abandoning the rules that were put in place

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in that remarkable period in the decade after

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the Second World War.

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So, we face a fundamental challenge in relation to

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whether we care about these rights. The idea the individual

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is now an actor on the international stage and has rights

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exercisable not only in relation to his or her fellow individuals

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but against the state. And rights not just before national courts,

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rights before an international court and international instances.

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That was a hard fought victory in the 1940s

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it was unique, for millennia there had not been such rights

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and yet there are now people in this country, too

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in this parliament also who say the time has come for

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the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Convention

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on Human Rights. Because, why? Because they don't like

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judgments about prisoners' voting rights or they don't like

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the way in which certain immigrants are allowed to have

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certain rights but that is the essence of human rights.

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That is the essence of the system that was put in place,

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is that no one falls into a black hole.

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Everyone has minimum rights at all times and in all circumstances.

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And at the heart of that idea is the place of

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every human individual having indivisible rights to be exercised at all times.

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Now, I mentioned this building Parliament and why it was significant.

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On the 24th of November 1998 I was involved

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in receiving a judgment in a case that I've been involved in --

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the Pinochet case. And in sense the case articulated the

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moment when the idea of individual rights became very real.

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What was an issue? Some of you will remember what happened.

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Senator Pinochet came to the United Kingdom, for medical treatment.

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He took tea with some rather powerful friends and

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then one day out of the blue a knock came on the door

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and he was arrested. Arrested for allegations of international

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crimes committed in Chile very far away not even against

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British nationals.

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The idea was posited on something called 'universal jurisdiction'

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the idea that some crimes: torture, disappearing, killing on a significant scale,

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crimes against humanity that are so terrible

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that any country can exercise jurisdiction in relation to those crimes.

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And a Spanish prosecuting judge decided to indict

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senator Pinochet for those crimes and he was in England,

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an arrest warrant was issued seeking his extradition to Spain.

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Senator Pinochet did exactly what one would

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expect him to do, he said: "You can't arrest me, I am the State."

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That's the 19th century view of international law.

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'L'Etat, c'est moi.' I have absolute power and you

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the English courts, the Law lords on the House of Lords are

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not entitled to overwrite my immunity.

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The case was argued for quite a few days and a couple of

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weeks after it was argued we trotted off to

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the Chamber of the House of Lords, when the grand old tradition

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has changed now, we got a Supreme Court,

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five Law Lords stood up in turn to give the judgment.

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It was the single most decisive

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and defining moment of my professional life

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in which the system of international rules, the old system, was cast away.

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Never before had any former head of State been held

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in the courts of this country or any other country outside

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his own to be not entitled to claim immunity for a mass crime.

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And the Law Lords took their vote, very soon on we would

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two nil down. Two out of the five had voted for immunity.

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And then it was 2-1 and then it was 2-2 and there was one

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judge left to express a view and at the moment when

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that judge articulated his view things were very finely balanced.

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You go with the old system: absolute immunity for former head of State.

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Or do you go with the new system?

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The system that says individuals have rights

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and that right includes the right to proceedings, legal proceedings against

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people who commit crimes that are particularly heinous.

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And the fifth judge -- the fifth judge said 'no immunity'

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and at that moment you can hear, you can still see it on

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the CNN website, the BBC website if you go to the archive

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there was certain sharp intake of breath.

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It was a remarkable moment because it was the moment

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more than any other where one recognised that the system

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had indeed changed and there's no room for complacency.

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A lot has happened since then. It's extraordinarily important

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that we do not lose the right of individuals to be protected

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against their own governments at any time.

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Every single person in Syria who is subject today in Homs

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or elsewhere, to the kind of heinous terrible indiscriminate attacks

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that are taking place is entitled to turn around to us

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and to say, to us and to our governments:

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"You adopted a new system in the middle of the last century,

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you are required to respect that system

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and you are required to protect us from this kind of

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system that is taking place."

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That is the new system of international law.

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That is the new set of rules that were talked about

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for the person who spoke, sang wonderfully credibly movingly

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just before me.

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That is a system which reflects a single idea:

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the place of the individual in international society.

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And I invite you all to think about it

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and to defend it with everything you have.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)