Jenny Kuper

Email: j.kuper@lse.ac.uk
Administrative support: Bradley Barlow
Room: New Academic Building 7.23

Dr Jenny Kuper is a Visiting Fellow at LSE, and is also qualified as a UK solicitor. She worked for a number of year as a solicitor, specialising in child-related law (including family law, care cases and juvenile justice), prior to obtaining her PhD in international law in 1996. She has been a Research Fellow at LSE since 1999, based primarily in the Law Department and with links to  the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, the IHL Project, the LSE-based Study Group on 'A Human Security Doctrine for Europe' and The Department of International Development. She has also worked more recently as a consultant for UNICEF on law reform issues in Nepal, and for the International Committee of the Red Cross as the UK expert for the study on 'Customary International Humanitarian Law.'

LSE Experts page 
 

Research interests

Research interests generally cover: international law relating to children in armed conflict situations, international human rights law, humanitarian law, children's rights and United Nations matters.

Current research interests include:-

- the development of child-related law in Nepal;

- challenges facing the African Committee on the Rights of the Child in implementing particular aspects of the African children’s charter, and lessons that can be drawn from that experience;

- assessment of the informal justice processes in Sierra Leone and/or Rwanda as regards addressing the issue of ‘child soldiers’.

- legal ‘expert’ advising Forum-Asia (a consortium of SE Asian NGOs) on the appropriate legal standards for the proposed new Human Rights Declaration for the ASEAN region.

 

External activities

  • Consultant, UNICEF Nepal, 2006

  • Consultant, International Committee of the Red Cross, 1997 and 2008/09 - UK expert for study on Customary International Humanitarian Law

  • Member of Advisory Board of Entelechy Arts, an arts/advocacy company for people with learning disabilities and others who are generally socially excluded.

  • Member of 'Advisory Group on Military Detention' (first meeting Feb., 2010) advising HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers, on inspection of UK overseas military detention facilities.

 

Teaching

Books

Military Training and Children in Armed Conflict: Law, Policy and Practice (Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2005)

Military training - cover

This book aims to address three main questions: what are the obligations of officers of national armed forces in relation to children, either civilians or combatants, whom they or those under their command may encounter while participating in situations of armed conflict? How realistic and achievable are these obligations? How can compliance with them be encouraged, monitored, and/or enforced? The book examines these questions in the context of military training. In doing so, it has another inextricably linked aim: to see if there are ways in which the training of officers can improve the protection of children in armed conflict situations, in accordance with international law and policy. It contains case studies of practice in 11 diverse countries, and examples of actual training materials that can be modified for use in different countries and contexts.

click here for publisher's site

click here for a PDF summarizing key rules
 for military training regarding children
 

International Law Concerning Child Civilians in Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1997)

The first international law book dedicated to an analysis of the complex web of human rights and humanitarian law relevant to the treatment of child civilians in armed conflict situations. It contains a case study examining the applicability of this body of law to various conflicts involving Iraq in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

click here for publisher's site

 

Selected articles / chapters in books

‘Reparations for Children’ in F. Medjouba (ed.) Building Peace in Post-Conflict Situations (BIICL, 2012), pp.211-224.

 

'The Development of International Child Law', in T.Cushman (ed.) Handbook of Human Rights, (Routeledge, 2012), pp.333-348.

 

‘A Minor Matter? The Place of Children in an EU Security Doctrine’, 18.1 International Journal of Children’s Rights (2010), pp. 127-147.

 

‘Children in Armed Conflict: Moral and Legal Dilemmas’ 2008 Symposium Issue (on child combatants) of Journal of Juvenile Law, La Verne College of Law, California

 

‘Military Training and International Criminal Accountability’, in International Criminal Accountability and the Rights of Children, T.M.C. Asser Press/ Cambridge University Press, 2006.


‘Using Law: The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Women and Children’, Vol. 15, No. 2 Interights Bulletin (2004), pp. 51-54.


'Children in Armed Conflict: The law and its uses' in Vol. 43, No.1 Development (March 2000), pp.32-39.

Examines the question of what use is international law concerning children in armed conflict? She asks 'What is it for? What does it do?' from a more limited and legalistic question in order to outline the current law and its implementation mechanisms before going on to question their value.

click here for full text via Swetwise [LSE access on campus]
[LSE off campus, login to SWETSWISEvia ATHENS login option and search for journal article]
[otherwise subscribers only]

 

'Children and Armed Conflict – Some Problems in Law and Policy', in D. Fottrell (ed.) Revisiting Children's Rights: A Decade on From the Children's Convention (Kluwer 2000), pp. 101-113.

 

Reports / discussion papers

Project Notes on law and HIV/AIDS (Crisis States Research Centre, LSE, 2005)

see http://www.crisisstates.com/download/projectnotes/kuper.pdf

 

Working Paper on HIV/AIDS and Law in Uganda  (Crisis States Research Centre, LSE, 2005)

see http://www.crisisstates.com/Research/projects/global07.htm

 

Final Report for UNICEF Nepal: Assessment of the Terrorist and Disruptive (Control) and Punishment Ordinance (TADO)

 

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