Dr. Fatsah Ouguergouz, an Algerian national, is a consultant in international law and an independent arbitrator in commercial and investment arbitration, He has over 30 years of experience in international law, including more than 25 years of practice in international judicial matters, arbitration, mediation and conciliation. He has been elected Associate Member of the Institut de droit international at the Beijing Session (August/September 2021).

He chaired the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Burundi (2016-2018) established by the United Nations Human Rights Council (Geneva) and was United Nations Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Burundi (2010-2011).

From 2006 to 2016, he was one of the first eleven judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Arusha, Tanzania), elected by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union; he served as Vice-President from 2012 to 2013.

Prior to his election to the African Court, Dr. Ouguergouz was Secretary of the International Court of Justice (The Hague) where he practiced for twelve years (1995-2006). Before joining the main judicial body of the United Nations, he was a legal officer at the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs (New York) (1992-1994), then a Human Rights Expert dispatched to Rwanda by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Geneva) to investigate the genocide.

Dr. Ouguergouz taught public international law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva for four years (1989-1992). He was an Orville H. Schell Fellow at Yale Law School (New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America). He was also Father Robert F. Drinan Professor of Human Rights at Georgetown University Law Center (Washington D.C., United States of America) and Visiting Professor at the University Panthéon-Assas (Paris II, France), at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina). In 2018, he was Senior Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva) for the preparation of the special course he gave at the Hague Academy of International Law in July of the same year.

He is a member of the curatorium of the African Institute of International Law (Arusha); he is also a founding member and was Executive Director of the African Foundation for International Law (The Hague), as well as Associate Editor of the African Yearbook of International Law.

Dr. Ouguergouz holds a Bachelor of Law from the University of Saint-Etienne (France) and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies of Geneva (Switzerland); he is the author of numerous publications, including several books, the most recent being “L’Union africaine: cadre juridique et institutionnel – Manuel sur l’Organisation panafricaine” (co-edited with Abdulqawi Yusuf, Editions Pedone, Paris, 2013, 471 pages).