The Cambridge University Land Society welcomes students, alumni, and their guests to join them for their tenth Whitehall lecture - A Short History of Colonialism, a Modern Crime Against Humanity
– Chagos: The Last British Colony in Africa.

• This Lecture will be given live before an invited audience and streamed live internationally

‘A book like no other I have ever read – unputdownable and unforgettable’ wrote Orlando Figes of Philippe Sands book ‘East West Street’. The Times commented on its Book of the Year ‘…It makes a compelling case for international law and the rights of the individual as it sweeps you along with its astonishing narrative’.

Professor Sands takes us from the horrors of the Holocaust in Poland and the Nuremberg Trials which established the concepts of ‘Crimes against Humanity’ and ‘Genocide’, to the case history of the Chagos Islands and the advisory judgments against the United Kingdom Government at the International Court of Justice (I.J.C.) in 2019 and affirmed by the U.N. General Assembly – the last British colony in Africa.

This story is just part of the succession of problems facing the world today in terms of the effects the invasion of land borders, the use of national borders by authoritarian regimes, the plight of asylum seekers and refugees in entering and crossing land borders are and continue to have on peoples Human Rights.

The Chagos Islands case goes before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in Hamburg to which the British Government is a party. Professor Sands represents the Mauritian Government in this case. He has described, in a New York Times article “Britain’s brazen double standard [as] grotesque and damaging”. It undermines the Biden and UK Governments principles invoked to Beijing over China’s claims in the South China Sea.

The Lecture will be immediately followed by a Panel Discussion moderated by Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times. Panel members will include Afua Hirsch, writer and broadcaster’; Colin Samson, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex and author of ‘The Colonialism of Human Rights’ and Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh, Senator McMaster Professor of Global Human Rights MacMaster University, Ontario

Note: The 9th Whitehall Lecture Given by David Runciman FBA, Professor of Politics in the University of Cambridge – “Did Covid Kill the Climate? How Democracies Fail in a Time of Crisis”, attracted 300 registrants worldwide from 14 countries and including 20 academic institutions. Over 1,700 people have attended the Lecture series. Attendees include members of the UK parliament, Government Ministers, Diplomats, Senior Civil Servant, representratives of International organisations, business people, poltical activists and academics. Over 3,000 copies of the lectures have been distributed and lectures have been used as supporting evidence at Parliamentary Select Committees.