Professor and Judge Fausto POCAR
Fausto Pocar is Professor Emeritus of International Law at the University of Milan, where he also served as Faculty Dean (1981-84) and as Vice-Rector (1984-97).
From 2000 to 2017 he served as a Judge (President 2005-08) of the ICTY. During the same years he also was a Judge of the Appeals Chamber (President 2005-08) of the ICTR until its closing in 2015. He was appointed Judge ad hoc to the International Court of Justice in the case Belgium v. Switzerland, 2011 and in the first case Ukraine v. Russian Federation, 2017, concluded in January 2024. He has recently been appointed Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (2024).
Professor Pocar has long experience in UN activities. He was a member of the Human Rights Committee under the ICCPR (1985-2000) and was its Chairman and Rapporteur. Further, he was appointed Special Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for visits to Chechnya and the Russian Federation (1995-1996). As a delegate of Italy, he participated in many sessions of the UN General Assembly and of the UN Commission on Human Rights, where he also served as Chair of the informal WG which drafted the UNGA Resolution on minorities (1992). He has also been (1984-94) the Italian delegate to the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and its Legal Sub-Committee.
Professor Pocar has also devoted much attention to European Law, and to Private International Law. He published the most senior Italian Manual of European Union Law in Italy (1973, with 11 editions) and was the Rapporteur for the revision of the EU judicial Brussels Convention (1996-1999) and of the revised Lugano Convention of 2007. He also was a Delegate, Chairman or Rapporteur on several sessions of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (from 1980 to 2024), including the co-Rapporteur of the Draft Worldwide Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments (1993-2001). As of 1986 he is Director of the “Rivista di diritto internazionale privato e processuale”, the leading Italian journal on private international law, and member of the editorial board of several other legal periodicals.
A Dr h.c. at Antwerp and Buenos Aires, Professor Pocar is the author of hundreds of publications on International Law, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, International Criminal Law, Private International Law and European Law. He has lectured at the Hague Academy of International Law (1983, 1993) and since 1997 is a member and treasurer of the “Institut de Droit International”, where he is currently the Secretary-General. He has been visiting professor and has lectured in many universities worldwide.
He is the past President and now Honorary President of the San Remo International Institute of Humanitarian Law, the past President of the Italian Society of International Law, and the President of the “Universities Network for Children in Armed Conflict”. In 2014, he was awarded the Great Cross Knighthood, the highest Italian distinction, by the President of the Italian Republic.