The Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights will host

Colonel Desmond Travers

One of the 4 Authors of the

‘The Goldstone Report’ on the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008-2009

March 5^th 4pm Cavanagh Pharmacy Building LG 51

 

(Cavanagh Pharmacy Building is on College Road and LG51 is on the ground floor across from the cafe)

 

Colonel Desmond Travers will be talking about his experience on the fact finding mission for the UN’s landmark Goldstone Report on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2009.Colonel Travers was one of the four co-authors of the report and the lead military expert in the fact-finding mission.

 

Biography

 

Born in the West of Ireland in 1941, Colonel Travers has had an extremely diverse and distinguished military career. He began his military service in Cyprus. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1987 Colonel Travers volunteered to travel to the region to take up the position of Military Observer. He and his family moved to Northern Israel, where they lived for two years. Whilst there he was hijacked and captured by members of a Palestinian-Lebanese national movement as well as by Israeli forces.

 

Colonel Travers has commanded peacekeeping troops in Cyprus and Lebanon and served in the Balkans twice, in Croatia for one year and Sarajevo for another, where he was the Chief of Information and the Chief of Operations for an EU Monitoring organisation. Sarajevo was his final tour of duty. He became the Commandant of the Irish Army’s Military College, The Curragh, and in 2001 retired from the Forces. He then went on to teach at the Institute of International Criminal Investigation in The Hague.