Articles by McGrigors
March 2005
Rights of Passage
(Published The Firm)
McGrigors human rights lawyer Alan Miller has just returned from the middle east where he has been training judges from the world’s most turbulent war zone – Iraq. Unable to travel to the country itself, for security reasons, Miller is forced to run the training camps from surrounding countries.
Yet he and his international colleagues will return later this year to finish the job they started. gordon laing discovers just what it takes to complete a legal tour of duty.
When it comes down to it there are, most likely, three real reasons for most lawyers wanting to become lawyers. The first, and perhaps the most popular reason, is the perceived financial reward. Harsh, but true. The second, for those young enough, is Ally McBeal – or rather the populist glamour that she brought to the profession. The third is, simply, to make a difference. Alan Miller jumped into his legal career for the latter of those reasons – besides, he’s too old for Ally McBeal to have swayed him.
Miller, director of the human rights practice at McGrigors, is back in Glasgow having led a UN-backed project to train Iraqi judges, following the country’s ‘liberation’.
Having worked over the years with the UN and the British Council in countries like Sudan, Georgia, and China, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights institute asked Miller to be part of a delegation tasked with training 650 Iraqi judges, prosecutors and lawyers. A role that Miller relishes, despite the potential dangers: “We don’t run the programme in Iraq, we teach in a neighbouring country for security reasons. (To date the training has taken place in the United Arab Emirates, but in April the camp will be moved to Cairo and then to Jordan.) We train 60 or 70 lawyers and judges at the one time, and if you tried to organise that in Iraq, you would not survive.
The dangers of gathering a vast number of Iraq’s top legal representatives together, at the one time in Iraq, is clear.
“Several of the lawyers and judges that we have been training have been subject to assassination attempts. The head of the law school and his wife, for example, were assassinated in Mosul for their promotion of human rights.
“The current Minister for Justice in Iraq, the former President of the Iraqi Bar Association, who was also on the first course that we organised, has been subject to assassination attempts.
“It is a very dangerous country for those who are
publicly and actively promoting human rights. They’re threatened,
and worse.”
But despite Iraq’s recent turbulent history, Miller is quick to point
out that, prior to Saddam Hussein taking power, the country was an active
and respected player in the international human rights system: “Iraq
was signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and much of
its law was generally consistent with the Declaration. But when Saddam
took over, for the next three decades, all of that was marginalised. The
developments in human rights law over the last 30 years have not been
experienced or reflected in Iraq. So, we are trying to re-engage the country
to the human rights system, rather than starting them from afresh. The
Iraqis are very proud of their history of civilisation, but feel humiliated
by Saddam’s regime and their subsequent international isolation.
Since the fall of Saddam they are very welcoming and very pleased to be
back in an international arena. But also, they want it recognised that
they are a very ancient and proud country.
Miller has had an interest in human rights that goes back decades. “It
wasn’t called human rights when I was a boy, but the idea of being
a poor man’s lawyer, or defending causes, was always what interested
me.”
He graduated in the 70s, but “wasn’t inspired” by his legal education at university, so decided to travel for a year. One year became nine years, and, after almost a decade, Miller came back to Scotland to reintroduce himself to the country, and the law. Now, having been a practising lawyer for around 25 years he heads up McGrigors’ human rights practice, the only one of its kind in the UK.
Through the 80s and 90s Miller was director of the Scottish Human Rights Centre – the main non-governmental human rights campaigning centre in Scotland – before becoming a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde, in 1996, specialising in human rights. Practising as a criminal lawyer (at the Lambie Law Partnership) he gained a reputation for representing miners, peace activists, environmentalists and Poll Tax campaigners in his Castlemilk-based practice, and became the president of the Glasgow Bar Association, in 2000.
“At that point the Human Rights Act had come into effect,” said Miller, “meaning that human rights were, if not mainstream, coming in from the cold, so I wanted to see if I could exclusively do human rights work, giving up my criminal practice.”
McGrigors gave Miller the infrastructure and resources
to see where a human rights consultancy practice could go. And, for the
last three-and-half years he’s been there developing the practice.
Miller himself has never been to Iraq, “the security is actually
much worse than portrayed in the news,” he said. The lawyers that
he works with would love to host the trainers in Iraq, but their very
strong advice, at present, is not to come. “However,” continued
Miller, “the overwhelming experience has been that the Iraqis trust
us and have confidence in our motives and integrity. They are very, very
warm and we have close relationships. They are a very resilient lot, but
really, just ordinary lawyers who have lived through extraordinary times.”
Miller returns to the training, which is currently at the
halfway point, in the spring. His time is provided by McGrigors and the
service is offered virtually pro bono. All the administration costs are
paid for by the UK Department for International Development.
“As a human rights lawyer,” continued Miller, “it is very
challenging as you have, in a very real way, the issues of Islamic law
and international human rights law, and the relations that exist between
them, and how that agenda can be moved on. That’s an issue that is
of global significance, not one that is just connected to Iraq. As an
international human rights lawyer that is a very compelling circumstance
to be dealing with.
“It is also very important that this programme and
training in human rights law is not being presented or understood as being
Western. It has to be understood as being genuinely international and
universal – based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
the Iraqi state signed up to back in the late 1940s.”
A number of the lawyers and judges trained by Miller predate Saddam’s
rise to power. However, many do not – to a certain extent Saddam
overthrew the legal system when he came into power – so there is
a strict vetting system for judges.
However, “Iraqi lawyers are very keen to be able to use human rights to improve their own capacity to be lawyers, to defend their clients or eliminate things like torture, which they have always been against. Many of the lawyers themselves, under Saddam, were tortured. In that sense they are very forward-looking and keen to learn more.”
Miller has to be able to balance this work with the general running of his practice for McGrigors. And, as well as working with governments, politicians and international bodies, Miller’s time is spent training policy makers in the Scottish Executive and local authorities while training businesses on the role of human rights in enabling ethical foreign investment, good governance, increased trade and the ending of sanctions by building up the rule of law in respect for human rights.
“It’s not as lucrative as conventional areas of law, but any practice that looks to have an international reach, or clients that look to access international markets, then human rights expertise is just something a big, modern, forward-looking law firm will increasingly see the point in having,” said Miller.
“There is no doubt that there is a need for programmes such as the Iraqi one, and the Human Rights department of the IBA gets busier and busier every year. But it is good to be challenged and to step outside your own comfort zone. It makes you look at yourself and your own background much more critically. I would encourage young lawyers to actively pursue opportunities that would let them gain such experiences.”
Alan Miller is a director in the human rights law
team at McGrigors Glasgow.
For further information please contact:
humanrights@mcgrigors.com
The frequency with which McGrigors is mentioned in the press is testament to the high-profile nature of the work we do. As well as this, our lawyers are regular contributors to the broadsheets and specialist publications ensuring the level of our knowhow is well known.