| Born:
21 February 1939, Milan, Italy
Fausto Pocar is 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. As of
1 February 2000, he has been a Judge of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was re-elected
for a four year term by the General Assembly of the United Nations,
as of 16 November 2001, and subsequently re-elected for another term,
expiring November 2009.
Since his appointment, he has served first as a Judge in a Trial
Chamber, where he sat on the first case concerned with rape as
a crime against humanity, and later 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. From March
2003 and 17 November 2005, he served as Vice-President of the ICTY.
Judge Pocar also has a long standing experience in United Nations
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 first conflict in 1995 and
1996. 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, that 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.
Judge Pocar 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 and is a member and treasurer of the “Institut de Droit
International”, as well as a member of several other international
law associations.
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