Enforced Disappearances: Human Rights Norms, Institutions, and Enforcement in Reality

Enforced disappearance is one of the most heinous human right violations. As an independent expert member of the UN Human Rights Council Special Procedure mechanism, Professor Baik will explain the UN’s efforts to fight against the human rights violations based on his first-hand account experience as member and Vice-chair of the Working Group. Baik will also discuss the reality of human rights norms, institution, and enforcement introducing new challenges that the world community is encountering such as the violations committed by non-state actors, short-term enforced disappearances, the disappearances in the context of migration, and protecting the rights of the victims in the context of counter-terrorism and national security campaign. About the Lecturer: Dr. Tae-Ung Baik is Professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law, and Director of Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is also a member and Vice-Chair of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), which reviews the enforced disappearance cases submitted by the UN member states as a mandate holder of the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Procedure. Dr. Baik teaches international human rights law, comparative law, and Korean Law. Before joining University of Hawaii Law School, he taught at the Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia. He received his first law degree from Seoul National University College of Law, and earned his master (LL.M.) and doctoral (J.S.D.) degrees on international human rights law from Notre Dame Law School. He was admitted to the Bar as an attorney-at-law in the State of New York, and had been a visiting scholar at the East Asian Legal Studies Program, Harvard University Law School. He worked for Human Rights Watch in New York as a research intern and consultant, and served at the 56th United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights as a legal adviser to the delegation of South Korea. Dr. Baik was engaged in the democracy movement in the Republic of Korea in the 1980s-90s, and experienced incarceration twice, while Amnesty International designated him as prisoner of conscience. His publication includes: Seeking Human Rights Community in Asia (Changbi, 2017), Emerging Regional Human Rights Systems in Asia (2012), and Non-judicial Punishments of Political Offenses in North Korea - With a Focus on Kwanriso, 64 Ame. J. Comp. L. 891 (2016)