Biography of Hans Corell
Hans
Corell has been Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal
Counsel of the United Nations since March 1994.
In this capacity, Mr. Corell is head of the Office of Legal
Affairs in the UN Secretariat.
Before
joining the United Nations in 1994, Mr. Corell, a national of Sweden,
was Ambassador and Under-Secretary for Legal and Consular Affairs in his
country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1994.
He
served for 13 years in the Ministry of Justice, in the capacity of Under-Secretary
for Legal Affairs (1981-1984), Assistant Under-Secretary (1979-1981),
and Legal Adviser (in 1972 and from 1974 to 1979). Interspersed with his
service in the Ministry of Justice, Mr. Corell served as an additional
Member of the Svea Court of Appeal (1973), as Associate Judge of Appeal
(1974), and as Judge of Appeal (1980).
Mr.
Corell began his career in 1962 as a court clerk, later becoming a
presiding judge in petty criminal cases and then an Assistant Judge in a
district court, before entering the Ministry of Justice in 1972.
Mr.
Corell was a member of his country's delegation at the United Nations
General Assembly from 1985 until he took his current UN appointment in
1994. In
addition, Mr. Corell was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration
at The Hague from 1990.
He has also been a member of various expert committees in his
country, within the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), including the CSCE Moscow Human Dimension
Mechanism to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (1992-1993), which
presented the first proposal for the establishment of an international
criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
He was Chairman of the Working Group at the 1992 CSCE Expert
Meeting on Peaceful Settlement of Disputes, held in Geneva.
He was the Secretary-General's Representative to the United
Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment
of an International Criminal Court, held in Rome from 15 June to 17 July
1998.
Mr.
Corell holds board memberships in several Swedish legal societies and is
the author of many publications, including "The European Convention
on Human Rights: Swedish Experiences – Thoughts for the Future",
which appeared in Studies in International Law, "Legal Advisers
Meet at United Nations Headquarters", and "Third Legal
Advisers Meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York", both
published in the American Journal of International Law. Reference is
also made to <http://www.un.org/law/co
Born in Västermo, Sweden, on 7 July 1939, Mr. Corell received a Law degree at the University of Uppsala. He holds an honorary Doctor of laws degree at the University of Stockholm.