On the evening of 13 November, trustees, friends and staff of Facing History & Ourselves UK gathered for a wide-ranging and illuminating conversation with Phillipe Sands KC.
Trustees, friends and FHAO UK staff gather for our salon with Philippe Sands KC.
Sands, an internationally renowned writer, lawyer and scholar, spoke principally on The Last Colony (2022), his book about the decades-long legal and diplomatic effort to restore the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Despite the movement’s countless setbacks, including the UK and US’s apparent disregard for the International Court of Justice and the UN General Assembly’s affirmations of Mauritian sovereignty, Sands was unequivocal.
Philippe Sands KC, author of The Last Colony (2022)
Teaching Holocaust and Human Behaviour
Lead your students through a detailed and challenging study of the Holocaust that asks what this history can teach us about the power and impact of choices.
Sands’s work affirms this commitment. He is also the author of the award-winning East West Street (2016), a genre-bending account of the Nuremberg trial and the origins of international law–at once memoir and scholarship, personal and political, historically specific and broadly applicable.
Our Teaching Holocaust and Human Behaviour unit encourages students to grapple with the concepts of justice; law and judgement; memory and legacy. The final two lessons, in particular, address whether justice was achieved at the Nuremberg Trials and ask us to consider how we memorialise the Holocaust.
Given Sands’s expertise extends to international law more broadly, the conversation touched on other current issues, from the latest developments in UK and US politics to ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Though the past several months have brought forth some of international law’s most contentious–and possibly unresolved–issues, Sands emphasised the differences between what the law says and how the public may perceive it. He also encouraged us not to lose faith in the (often invisible) workings of our global system as a whole. Whether on matters of travel or trade, Sands said, ‘99.9% of international law works just fine, we don’t just ever hear about it’.
Looking inward, Sands also reflected on the shortcomings of his own education. As he tells it, his primary and secondary schooling exposed him only to pro-colonialist accounts of the British imperial project—and included no mention of the Chagos Islands. Therefore, Sands understands his work as effectively a ‘second coming of age’: ‘I recognised what I was not taught, and it took another life to understand the reality of how others see us’.
Philippe Sands KC, author of The Last Colony (2022)
Standing Up for Democracy
These lessons foster the critical thinking, mutual respect, and toleration necessary to bring about a more humane society.
Sands’s advocacy also resonates with our Standing Up for Democracy unit; specifically, the lessons on understanding human rights, and the history of international law. As students consider the nuances of the United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Chagos Islands case represents an interesting tension between the document’s aspirations and its efficacy.
Following our discussion, Rita Halbright, Facing History’s Chair of Trustees, drew further parallels between our evening with Sands and a Facing History classroom:
‘I’ve been involved as a volunteer and as a donor. But more than anything else, I’m a student of Facing History and tonight was another great example. This evening I’ve really been invited to think about things I've never thought about before.’
To learn more, check out our resources below.
