Charlotte Carles | Indo Pacific Fellow
Pictured: Charlotte Carles and Tim McMcCormack. Image provided by Charlotte Carles.
One frosty Hobart afternoon in the corner of a cosy cafe, I had the privilege of speaking with Tim McCormack, one of the legal profession’s most influential players. Tim is the Special Adviser on War Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague and Professor of International Law at the University of Tasmania. As the sunset on his fourteen years at the Hague approaches, Tim reflects on war, marriage and the next generation.
How did your career in international humanitarian law commence?
I took a gap year after year 12 where I worked for a cousin in Burnie, the place I grew up in the north of Tasmania. The experience of criminal law captivated my imagination; I loved the drama of it, I was fascinated by the concept of justice. I then studied international law, where I was fascinated by the concept of sovereign nation states agreeing on constraints on their own behaviour. At the end of my degree, I was offered a place on a study mission to Egypt and Israel. I had travelled around Australia, but I had never been out of the country before.
This study mission was due to arrive back in Australia two weeks after the graduate legal practice course started, so I went to see the directors to ask for permission to start two weeks late. They said no. Upon reflection, I’m grateful for how things turned out because if I had started legal practice directly after graduation, I may not have had a career in international law.
What is your favourite thing about international humanitarian law (IHL)?
It’s an attempt (through the vehicle of the law) to introduce humanity as a constraint on what is permissible in war. War is the biggest existential threat to our planet, apart from climate change, and we attempt to ameliorate suffering through IHL. The limitation of IHL is that it doesn’t think about how we can prohibit war in the first place. Investigating war crimes is retrospective.
You were involved in the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law. Can you tell us more about that project?
We established the Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law in 2000, and I was the Inaugural Director for the first ten years. We conducted research and ran training courses with military leaders in Sydney at various defence establishments such as Balmoral Beach, and even some in the Philippines and Indonesia. We hosted courses on the laws of armed conflict for legal advisors and military commanders.
In the early 2000s, you worked closely with Asian stakeholders. Have you also worked in the South Pacific during your career?
In 1994 I was engaged by DFAT to travel around the South Pacific capitals. I went to Port Moresby, Suva, Port Vila, Rarotonga, Apia, Nuku’alofa and Honiara. I spoke with government officials about ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention and implementing legislation. In 1993, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans wanted to break through an impasse in negotiations for a Chemical Weapons Convention. Talks had been going on for twenty years in Geneva and really got nowhere. Gareth perceived Australia as a middle power in this dynamic, so I was engaged by DFAT as international law and disarmament expert to come in and help draft an alternative treaty text for the convention.
That text became the basis of the way in which the negotiations in Geneva came to completion, and the Convention opened for signatory in 1993. I was deployed in the South Pacific for the first initiative and a very dear friend of mind, who is a technical advisor, was deployed to South-East Asia for the second initiative. For the small Pacific nations, Australia is a massive player, and we don’t tend to think of ourselves that way in international affairs. I found that whole experience of my extensive travel in the region very educational, stimulating and beneficial.
What do you think the biggest IHL issue in the Asia-Pacific region is?
The biggest regional IHL issue is how easy it is for law to be violated. When that happens without accountability, it breeds a sense of impunity. We saw that with our own SAS forces in Afghanistan. Right now, Australia is trying to do the right thing by undertaking a criminal investigation of alleged atrocities in Afghanistan. It’s crucial that we do that, because if we don’t, what’s the point of pontificating about how important IHL is?
What are your thoughts on whistleblowing laws in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity?
I think it’s really important that we have individuals who say: what happened here is appalling. We ought to be grateful for whistleblowers. We ought to be grateful for investigative journalists. We ought to be grateful for law firms that bring proceedings on behalf of victim families. I’m glad that Julian Assange has been freed, he has been under self-imposed custody for long enough. Regardless of motivation, he did expose countless violations of the law, so he made a great contribution in that respect.
Many young Australians interested in international affairs dream of visiting the Hague. Do you work with the other Special Advisers at the Hague, such as Amal Clooney?
I always enjoy being at the Hague. I’ve got lots of friends and colleagues who I love working with. I cycle to the building, feeling like: here I am again, I can’t wait to get in there. During this forthcoming September trip, I will hand in my pass and leave the building knowing that the next time I come back to the International Criminal Court will be as a visitor. I think that will be quite emotionally challenging for me. It will be the end of an era, and I’ll have to psych myself up for that before I get there.
I do work with the other Special Advisers. I now share the War Crimes portfolio for the first time, and when I complete my work in September this year that colleague will take over the War Crimes portfolio exclusively. Karim Khan has set up roundtables with 5-7 of us at the same event. That’s been a unique and thoroughly rewarding experience for me. That will be one of the things that I miss when I finish up- my fellow Special Advisers. I haven’t worked with Amal on advice about war crimes, but I’ve met her a couple of times before when she was at the ICTY- before she was Clooney. She’s a Special Adviser on Darfur. She’s a very good lawyer and I respect the work that she did on the Gaza situation with several others.
How have you managed to balance such a successful career with marriage?
That’s a good question. In fairness, it would be good to ask my partner that question. I think back now to how much travel I did to the Hague, to South-East Asia, and to the Pacific when our kids were young. I realise that it couldn’t have happened except for her commitment. I think our kids are all beneficiaries of her prioritisation of them.
At this stage in your career, do you still get anxious about making the wrong decision?
At the International Criminal Court, I’ve grown in my confidence about what the role is and what it involves, but we always come across novel situations that have never been tested before. There’s a certain nervousness about it; are we getting this right? It’s one of the joys of this role. I thought I knew the law pretty well, but every now and then I get really tested on something and realise maybe I didn’t know that so well. I’m grateful for that, because it helps remind me that there’s still lots to know.
Finally, what is your advice to young students who aspire to work at high-level international institutions such as the International Criminal Court or the United Nations?
The first piece of advice would be don’t accept for a moment that it’s beyond your reach, because all of those institutions including the other international courts and tribunals are full of Aussies. There’s heaps of them! We are overrepresented per capita. There’s absolutely no reason at all why young law students or recent graduates ought not aspire to that.
The second thing is if that’s what you’re really interested in, you should follow your heart. Don’t follow voices in your life who say that international law isn’t really law, or that you should really be focusing on domestic or commercial law as that’s where the jobs and money is. Follow your passions. I did that when I chose to go to Egypt and Israel over doing legal practise. That’s where you’re going to be the best lawyer, anyway.
And my third and final piece of advice – when opportunities come, you should grab them. I can now see that if I hadn’t seized that study mission opportunity decades ago, many subsequent opportunities wouldn’t have materialised.
Thank you so much for your time, Tim!
Charlotte Carles is the Indo Pacific Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. Charlotte is a third year Bachelor of Laws (Honours) student from Fremantle and is currently living in the Indo Pacific region as a 2024 New Colombo Plan Scholar. She loves languages and is learning French, Spanish and Indonesian. As Indo Pacific Fellow, Charlotte intends to explore human rights and youth advocacy in the region.
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