From: WG Misogyny in Scotland <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxxx>
Sent: 03 February 2021 12:53
To: WG Misogyny in Scotland <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxxx>; x.xxxxxxx@xx.xx.xx
Cc: [redacted]; Stronach S (Sean) <xxxx.xxxxxxxx@xxx.xxxx>;
[redacted] Subject: Inaugural Meeting Letter - Misogyny WG Scotland - Baroness Helena Kennedy QC - 3 Feb 21
Dear Professor Devaney,
On behalf of the Chair, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, thank you for accepting the
invitation to become a member of the Working Group on Misogyny and Criminal
Justice in Scotland.
I have attached a letter which includes further information regarding the inaugural
meeting of the Working Group, which will be held on
Friday 12th February from
3pm
to 5pm, via Microsoft Teams.
Please contact the secretariat team if you have any questions.
Kind regards,
[redacted]
Justice Directorate
Criminal Justice Division
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxxx
By email: x.xxxxxxx@xx.xx.xx
___
03 February 2021
Dear Professor Devaney,
WORKING GROUP ON MISOGYNY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN SCOTLAND
On behalf of the Chair, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, thank you for accepting the invitation
to become a member of the Working Group on Misogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland.
Invitation to the Inaugural Meeting
The inaugural meeting of the Working Group will take place on
12 February 2021 from 3pm
until 5pm. Due to the ongoing COVID-10 pandemic, this meeting will take place virtually. You
can access the meeting via the following Microsoft Teams invite, which has also been sent
as a diary invite to your email address:
[redacted] The draft remit for the Working Group is included at Annex A. As highlighted in previous
correspondence, this remit will be discussed and confirmed during the first meeting of the
Working Group.
The agenda and papers will be distributed to attendees prior to the meeting.
Secretariat Support
The Working Group is independent from Scottish Government. However, Scottish
Government has provided a Secretariat team to provide the necessary administrative
support for the Working Group. This includes all FOIs, official responses on behalf of the
group and media requests. The team will support the coordination of all meetings and
facilitate the attendance of experts invited to provide evidence to the Working Group. If you
have any administrative or press related queries, you are invited to contact the Secretariat in
the first instance.
The Scottish Government will host information about the Working Group suitable for the
public domain on the Scottish Government web pages and you can access this information
here.
We will be in touch shortly to seek your availability for the second Working Group meeting,
due to be held 4-6 weeks after the inaugural meeting.
Membership
The Working Group will be chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, and comprise of
yourself, Chloe Kennedy (Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh) Susan Kemp (Practising
Solicitor, Human Rights Law), Emma Ritch (Executive Director, Engender), and Shelagh
McCall QC (Part time Sheriff and member of the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland).
Please see
Annex B for a revised and updated list of members’ biographies.
Mona Rishmawi (Chief of the Rule of Law, Equality and Non-Discrimination Branch in the
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) joins the Group in an advisory capacity,
as a staff member to the United Nations.
Jamie Lipton also joins the Group in an advisory capacity, on behalf of the Crown Office and
Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), to support the Group’s understanding of prosecutorial
process of crimes in Scotland.
Data protection
All personal and private information received by the Review will be stored electronically on
the Scottish Government’s electronic filing system.
All records and personal data handled by you and your team as part of the Review will be
handled in accordance with the Scottish Government Information Security Policy, the Data
Protection Act 1998 and any statutory successor, and the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR).
Many thanks for your interest in joining this important work. Please kindly confirm receipt of
this email and your confirmation of attendance at the inaugural meeting of the Working
Group by responding to the secretariat at: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxxx
Yours sincerely,
[redacted]
Annex A
[redacted]
ANNEX B
Membership Bios
Member
BIO
Mona
Mona Rishmawi is a human rights lawyer currently serving as the
Rishmawi
Chief of the Rule of Law, Equality and Non-Discrimination Branch
(Advisory
of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Role)
(OHCHR). Her responsibilities include leading OHCHR teams
working on the rule of law, women’s rights and gender issues,
racial justice, minorities and indigenous peoples.
She was appointed by the UN Secretary-General as the Executive
Director of the UN International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur in
2004-2005, established by the UN Security Council. The
Commission was mandated to investigate reports of serious
violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law
committed in Darfur by all parties, qualify the crimes, identify
individual perpetrators and, recommend accountability
mechanisms. She was also the UN Independent Expert on Human
Rights in Somalia from 1996 to 2000.
She started her legal and human rights career as a practicing
lawyer and working with national and international non-
governmental organizations. Her earlier positions include serving
as the Director of the Centre for the Independence of Judges and
Lawyers of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Geneva,
Switzerland, and the Executive Director of al-Haq, the first
Palestinian human rights organization.
She has law degrees from Ain Shams University in Cairo and
Columbia University in New York.
Dr Chloe
Chloe Kennedy's is a Senior Lecturer at the University of
Kennedy
Edinburgh, and main research interests are criminal law, legal
theory, legal history, and the relationship between these areas.
She is particularly interested in intellectual and cultural legal
history, focussing on the ways that prevailing ideas have shaped
the law's development and continue to inform our contemporary
assumptions. Her research also focuses on law and gender and
law and religion.
Susan Kemp
Susan Kemp is a Scots qualified lawyer with 25 years’ experience
as a practitioner in international criminal and human rights law in
Latin America, the United States, Europe and Africa. Her work
involved representing survivors in strategic litigation, investigating
war crimes and genocide, and providing technical assistance to
domestic law enforcement and civil society organisations. She was
a criminal investigator at the International Criminal Court in the
Hague and served with the Criminal Law and Judicial Advisory
Service at the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping and on
the UN Team of Experts on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict.
From 2015 to 2021 she was a Commissioner with the Scottish
Human Rights Commission and she is currently a member of the
IBA Human Rights Institute Council.
Emma Ritch
Emma is Engender’s Executive Director, leading on strategic
collaboration with our colleagues in the women’s, equalities, and
human rights sectors. She is also principally responsible for
engagement with Scottish and UK Government, the UN, and the
EU through the European Women’s Lobby. She is engaged by all
things feminist, but has particular interest in women and the
economy, intersectionality, violence against women, and the
relationship between women’s equality and women’s human rights.
Emma sits on a range of external working groups including the
First Minister's Advisory Council on Women & Girls, the joint
strategic board of Equally Safe, and the advisory group of the
Scottish Women’s Rights Centre. She chairs the Rape Crisis
Scotland board and the board of the Human Rights Consortium
Scotland, and is a member of the board of the European Women’s
Lobby.
Shelagh
Shelagh McCall QC called to the Scottish Bar in 2000 and
McCall QC
was appointed Queens Counsel in 2015. She specialises in
criminal law both at first instance and on appeal. She is
regularly instructed in high profile and complex cases.
Between 2006 and 2008, she was prosecution appeals
counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia. She was a founding commissioner at the Scottish
Human Rights Commission, serving from 2008-2015.
Shelagh is a part time sheriff and member of the Mental
Health Tribunal for Scotland.
Professor
Professor Devaney is a well-respected academic at Edinburgh
John Devaney University and is a specialist in child protections, welfare, domestic
and gender based violence.
During 2012 he was awarded a Fellowship by the Winston
Churchill Memorial Trust to study work in Norway and Canada with
individuals who use violence and abuse within their intimate
relationships. This formed the basis for his book on Domestic
Violence Perpetrators - Evidence informed responses.
Professor Devaney has been involved in a range of research
studies in both the UK and internationally, funded by research
councils, government departments and philanthropic organisations
on gender based violence.
He took up the position of the Centenary Chair and Head of Social
Work at the University of Edinburgh in 2018 and occupies this post
currently.
Jamie Lipton
Jamie Lipton is a qualified solicitor and a career prosecutor
(Advisory
having joined COPFS as a trainee solicitor in 2007. He
Role)
prosecuted both summary and solemn criminal cases in the
Sheriff and Justice of the Peace Courts in Lanarkshire before
joining the specialist High Court Sexual Offences Unit in
Glasgow. He is presently a Principal Procurator Fiscal
Depute in the COPFS Policy Division where he oversees the
work of the Victims and Witnesses team whose remit
includes prosecution policy relating to sexual crime,
domestically aggravated offending, stalking, human trafficking
and forced marriage, among other topics.”