Fausto Pocar - Judge and Former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia - Emeritus Professor of International Law at the University of Milan
Italian law professor Fausto Pocar was the Tribunal’s President between November 2005 and November 2008. He had previously served as the Vice-President between March 2003 and November 2005. Judge Pocar has been a Tribunal judge since 1 February 2000.
Judge Pocar is a Professor of International Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Milan, where he has also served as the Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences and as the Vice-Rector. He is the author of numerous publications on International Law, including Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Private International Law, and European Law. He has lectured at The Hague Academy of International Law. He is a member of the board of the Institute of International Law and Vice-President of San Remo’s Institute of International Humanitarian Law, as well as a member of several other international law associations.
Judge Pocar has a long-standing experience in UN activities, in particular in the field of human rights and humanitarian law. He has served for 16 years (1984-2000) as a member of the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has been its Chairman (1991-92) and Rapporteur (1989-90). Further, he was appointed Special Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for visits to Chechnya and the Russian Federation during the 1995-6 conflict.
He has also chaired the informal working group that drafted, within the Commission on Human Rights, the Declaration on the rights of people belonging to national or ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities, which was adopted in 1992 by the General Assembly. He has also been for a decade the Italian delegate to the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and its Legal Subcommittee.
Since his appointment to the ICTY, Judge Pocar has served as a Judge in a Trial Chamber, where he sat on the first case concerned with rape as a crime against humanity, and in the Appeals Chamber of the Tribunal, where he is still sitting. As a Judge of the Appeals Chamber, he is also a Judge of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). On appeal, he has participated in the adoption of the final judgments in several ICTY and ICTR cases, heard both at The Hague and in Arusha, Tanzania.
Topics:
- International Criminal Justice at a Crossroad
- Lights and Shadows in the Recent Development of International Criminal Law
