Law professor Milena Sterio to discuss the Artsakh conflict in ANC of Boston lecture


WATERTOWN, Mass. – The Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Boston is hosting a webinar on the current situation in Artsakh. This free and open online event will be held on Thursday, March 9, at 7:00 PM. Registration is required.

This online presentation, hosted by Ms. Ani Zargarian, will feature Professor Milena Sterio, the Charles R. Emrick Jr. – Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Professor Sterio’s presentation will be entitled “The Artsakh Conflict: International Law, Self-Determination and Remedial Secession.”

International Law establishes that specific groups are entitled to self-determination; that they have the right to auto-determine their political fate. The right to self-determination clearly applies to colonized and subjugated peoples; it is possible to argue that this right also applies to oppressed groups whose rights have been severely violated by their parent state. Self-determination is typically exercised through secession, whereby the relevant group secedes from the territory of its parent state to join another state or to form its own independent state. Professor Sterio will discuss the right to self-determination as well as the process of secession in the context of Artsakh, and she will analyze whether the people of Artsakh are entitled to the exercise of the right of self-determination through remedial secession.

The Managing Director of the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG), Professor Sterio is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. She is one of the six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog and a frequent contributor focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Professor Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. In Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh). She has participated as an expert at hearings of the International Criminal Court on various international criminal law issues. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. She is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

The audience will have the opportunity to engage the speaker in a Q&A session following the presentation. For all questions and additional information, please contact the ANC of Boston at anc.em@anca.org.

Ara Nazarian, PhD

Ara Nazarian, PhD

Ara Nazarian is an associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a degree in mechanical engineering, followed by graduate degrees from Boston University, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He has been involved in the Armenian community for over a decade, having served in a variety of capacities at the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society, the Armenian Cultural and Educational Center, Armenian National Committee of America, St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

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