Elizabeth Wilmshurst
 Elizabeth Wilmshurst     (solicitor) | ||||||||||||||
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| Born | 28 August 1948 | |||||||||||||
| Nationality | UK | |||||||||||||
| Alma mater | Clarendon School for Girls, King's College London | |||||||||||||
| Member of | Chatham House | |||||||||||||
Legal Adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who resigned in the run-up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
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Elizabeth Susan Wilmshurst was a Distinguished Fellow of the International Law Programme[ [1] at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), and Professor of International Law at University College London. She is best known for her role as Deputy Legal Adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
She resigned from the Foreign Office on 20 March 2003, three days after Lord Goldsmith's final advice[2] to the British government reversed her legal opinion (in Lord Goldsmith's first secret memo 10 days earlier[3]) that the invasion was illegal without a second United Nations Security Council Resolution to SCR 678. Although her resignation was public at the time,[4] the detailed reasons and resignation letter were not, and caused a stir when they were released two years later.[5]
On 26 January 2010, Wilmshurst gave evidence to the Iraq Inquiry about the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the advice given to then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on the same day as her former boss, Sir Michael Wood.[6]
Contents
Early life and career
Wilmshurst was educated at Clarendon School for Girls, a private boarding school, and studied law at King's College London (LLB and AKC, 1969).[7]
Wilmshurst was admitted as a solicitor in 1972.[7] From 1974 until her resignation in 2003, she was a legal advisor with HM Diplomatic Service.[7] She was the leading British negotiator of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, both within the framework of the UN Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of an ICC (1996–1998) and the Rome Diplomatic Conference (June–July 1998).
Letter of Resignation
In her letter of resignation, which later became public, she stated that she:
- … disagreed fundamentally with the Attorney General that the invasion of Iraq would be legal under international law. Her resignation letter not only illustrates in stark terms the strength of her views, but, for the first time, highlights the Attorney General's change of opinion on the legality of invasion within the space of less than two weeks.[8]
In essence, her censored letter strongly suggests that initially the Attorney General's legal opinion suggested that a war against Iraq would be illegal under international law. For a variety of motives this opinion was changed leading to Wilmhurst's resignation.
The Guardian version may be more accurate because they have actually read the whole letter. This is the conclusion drawn from it:
- The government yesterday tried to suppress evidence that the attorney general believed war against Iraq was illegal less than two weeks before British troops joined the US-led invasion of the country.
It has removed a key passage in the resignation letter written by Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, on March 18 2003, the eve of the invasion.
The remainder of her letter – in which she described the planned invasion as a "crime of aggression" – was released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act.[9]
Further career
From 2005 she became Associate Fellow of International Law at Chatham House and Visiting Professor at University College, London University[10].
A Document by Elizabeth Wilmshurst
| Title | Document type | Publication date | Subject(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Wilmshurst Resignation Letter | letter | 18 March 2002 | Iraq War 2003 Downing Street memo | Letter of resignation from her position as a UK Foreign Office legal adviser over the issue of the legality of military action against Iraq in the absence of a specific UNSC resolution authorising it |
References
- ↑ https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/elizabeth-wilmshurst
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1471659,00.html
- ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_04_05_attorney_general.pdf
- ↑ http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,919647,00.html
- ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4377605.stm
- ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8479996.stm
- ↑ a b c http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U40167
- ↑ http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623124
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1444455,00.html
- ↑ https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-people/elizabeth-wilmshurst
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