A discussion of what determines appropriate international humanitarian intervention has won the Law Society’s annual Graham Turnbull essay competition.

Winner Rebecca Hadgett, who is studying her LLM at Harvard Law School and will enter City University Law School in September, was awarded £500 from the Graham Turnbull Memorial fund. Her essay examined the question: ‘Applying human rights and humanitarian law, in what circumstances should forcible measures be permitted against a state that is subjecting its people to human rights abuses?’

The essay competition is named after solicitor Graham Turnbull, who was killed in 1997, aged 37, while working as a human rights monitor on a UN Human Rights mission in Rwanda.