Biography: Luc Walleyn was born in 1949, and has been an advocate since 1972. He is a specialist in immigration law, human rights, and humanitarian law. He is also supply judge (Juge de Paix) in Schaerbeek-Brussels, occasional lecturer at universities in Antwerp and Paris, and author of many publications, mainly on immigration law.
Luc Walleyn; Human Rights Lawyer
Walleyn was member of the Council of the Brussels Bar Association, and served as president of the organization Avocats sans Frontiéres (Lawyers without Borders) until last year. He participated in ASF programs in Rwanda, Burundi and Kosovo and represented the organization at the diplomatic conference on the International Criminal Court in Rome in 1998.
Linked to our presentation of Lawyers without Borders on December 30, 2005, and their website.
Also linked to our presentation of Rwanda Genocide Suspects On Tria on December 30, 2005.
As counsel of different NGOs, he won judgments three times in the Court of Arbitration (Constitutional Court), canceling some parts of new immigration and asylum laws. He also initiated the law suit against the Belgian soldiers participating in the peacekeeping operation in Somalia and won convictions for racist behavior. He was representing the Belgian victims of the former military regime in Guatemala as well as the Sabra and Shatila victims in their action against Ariel Sharon.
Luc Walleyn entered in the university in ’67, and this was a very crucial element. He tells: our generation was confronted with very important changes and we had a very strict, traditional Catholic education. And then we were confronted with this whole movement of ’68 that started in Belgium as a contest of strict, local structures of the university, etc., and very quickly moved on to a very large movement of solidarity with the Third World, Vietnam, and all these things came in. I was like a lot of students at this time, very quickly radicalized by that movement. I was studying law then.
I understood that law could be an element in working and improving the condition of people and helping people who do not have access to their rights. So I decided to continue that study; a lot of people stopped. But I thought it was important to become a lawyer advocate and I stayed in it until now. Maybe it was a logical evolution, but at the time, humanitarian law was not an issue. It became an important issue in the nineties.
When I started as a young lawyer, we wanted to work on very local issues of discriminated people, migrants we have in Brussels, a very important population of migrants from Turkey and Arab origin that were in quite difficult situations at the time — and there are still important problems. So I was working for years on many issues of immigration and asylum. And human rights issues, of course, are linked to that. Finally, I became more and more interested in humanitarian law as well. (Read the rest in the long berkeley interview).
Here a Real Player audio: Belgian human rights lawyer Luc Walleyn discusses the evolution of human rights law in the European Union and the implications of universal jurisdiction for international law. Go here to the link to listen.
El pasado 15 de mayo se reunió en Bruselas el Tribunal de Apelación belga a instancias de los abogados de las víctimas en el caso contra Sharon y de la Fiscalía General belga para determinar si finalmente Bélgica tiene o no jurisdicción para juzgar a Ariel Sharon. El Fiscal General de Bélgica sigue manteniendo una firme posición de apoyo a tesis de los abogados de las víctimas de Sabra y Chatila, según la cual Bélgica tiene competencia para enjuiciar a Sharon a través de la Ley Estatutaria belga de 1993. El Tribunal de Apelación belga ha remitido al próximo 28 de junio para hacer pública su decisión sobre la jurisdicción belga al amparo de la mencionada Ley. (See the rest on CSCAweb).
Here a link for a text in flamish: LUC WALLEYN, geboren in 1949, licenciaat in de rechten aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven, advocaat sinds 1972. Talen : Nederlands, Frans, Engels en passieve kennis van het Duits.
Naast een lange ervaring in burgerlijk en strafrecht, heeft Luc Walleyn zich gespecialiseerd in het administratief recht, meer specifiek het vreemdelingenrecht, alsook in bepaalde aspecten van het internationaal recht (internationaal privaatrecht, Europees recht met betrekking tot het verkeer van personen, internationale conventies op het gebied van de rechten van de Mens, humanitair recht).
Luc Walleyn is lid van de redactie van het Tijdschrift voor Vreemdelingenrecht, waarin hij regelmatig publiceert. Hij heeft meegewerkt aan verschillende werken, waaronder recent « Vluchtelingenrecht. Commentaren op de wet van 6.5.1993 », Mys en Breesch, 1994, « Immigration and asylumprocedures in Europe ». ILPA, 1995, « Administratief Procesrecht », Kluwer, 1996.
Hij is gewezen lid van de Raad van de Nederlandse Orde der Advocaten te Brussel, ondervoorzitter van « Advocaten Zonder Grenzen » en plaatsvervangend vrederechter te Schaarbeek.
et le meme texte en français: LUC WALLEYN: Né en 1949, licencié en droit de l’université de Louvain (K.U.L.), avocat depuis 1972. Langues: néerlandais, français, anglais et connaissance passive de l’allemand.
Tout en continuant à pratiquer le droit civil et pénal, dans lesquels il a une longue expérience, Luc Walleyn s’est spécialisé dans le droit administratif, spécifiquement le droit des étrangers, ainsi que dans certains aspects du droit international (droit international privé, droit de l’Union européenne en matière de circulation des personnes, conventions internationales en matière des droits de l’Homme, droit humanitaire).
Luc Walleyn est membre de la rédaction néerlandophone de la « Revue du Droit des Etrangers » (Tijdschrift voor Vreemdelingenrecht), dans laquelle il publie régulièrement des articles. Il a collaboré à plusieurs ouvrages, dont récemment « Vluchtelingenrecht. Commentaren op de wet van 6.5.1993 », Mys en Breesch, 1994, « Immigration and asylumprocedures in Europe ». ILPA, 1995, « Administratief Procesrecht », Kluwer, 1996.
Il est ancien membre du Conseil de l’Ordre néerlandais du barreau de Bruxelles et vice-président d’ »Avocats sans Frontières ».
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