Professor Andrew Clapham Will Serve on the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan

25 September 2017

The President of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), Ambassador Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli, appointed Professor Andrew Clapham to serve as a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan charged with monitoring and assessing the human rights situation in the country.

He will join Ms Yasmin Sooka, a leading human rights lawyer and the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa, and Dr Godfrey M. Musila, legal consultant in the areas of human rights, transitional justice and the rule of law and formerly director of Kenyan Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC).

Professor Clapham is an expert in international law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and has published widely on these issues. His current research focuses on the role of non-state actors in international law and related questions in human rights and humanitarian law. He is the former Director of the Geneva Academy and teaches in our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

‘I am honored to have been asked to join this important UN Human Rights Council Commission to see how best to address the challenging human rights situation in South Sudan. I look forward to going to the country and learning firsthand about the situation there so that the Commission can report and make recommendations on how to improve the situation’ underlines Professor Clapham.

About the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan

The HRC established the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan in March 2016 to monitor and report on the human rights situation in South Sudan and to make recommendations on transitional justice and accountability.

The Commission is scheduled to submit its second report to the HRC in March 2018.

The Situation in South Sudan

In its first report to the HRC, the Commission noted that the ‘conduct of the Government of South Sudan and of other parties to the conflict suggests the deliberate targeting of civilian populations on the basis of their ethnic identity by means of killings, abductions, unlawful detentions or deprivation of liberty, rape and sexual violence, and the burning of villages and looting’.