MQ Gespräche: Philipp Blom in conversation with Philippe Sands

Wed 22.10.2025, 18h | MQ Libelle
event fully booked!

Philippe Sands is the author of numerous books on international law and politics, most recently 38 Londres Street (New York: Penguin, 2025), his account of the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Pinochet and an unexpected connection to Nazi Germany. He is also one of the world’s most influential human rights lawyers, having conducted several cases at the International Court of Justice as a barrister. His book, East West Street (New York: Knopf, 2016), a remarkable blend of personal and legal history, examines the origins of the two separate concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity, which emerged at the same time in the same city, Lviv. But in a changing environment where impunity is back in vogue from Europe to the Middle East, politicians wanted on international arrest warrants appear once more to move around the world with relative ease. What means and instruments are available to bring those responsible on any side of a conflict to justice and strengthen international human rights?

Historian and journalist Philip Blom will lead the conversation with Philippe Sands. 

This event will be held in English.

Philippe Sands, born in 1960, is a lawyer and professor of international law and director of the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals at University College London. He is passionately committed to humanitarian causes and international law. Among other things, he formulated the charges against the Chilean dictator Pinochet. In 2020, he published “The Ratline: A Nazi on the Run,” and in 2017, “Return to Lviv,” which won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize and the 2016 Wingate Literary Prize and was named Book of the Year at the 2017 British Book Awards.

Philipp Blom (born 1970 in Hamburg, Germany) is a historian and author of several novels, journalistic, political, and philosophical works. He also works as a radio presenter, documentary filmmaker, and public lecturer.
 

MQ Gespräche

Together with guests who have made a name for themselves internationally as outstanding analysts, Philipp Blom discusses contemporary social, political, and scientific issues in order to shed light on their structures and driving forces from different perspectives.
A collaboration between MQ, IWM, BKF, and RD Foundation