Speaker details

Biography

Navi Pillay (South Africa) served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.  She is currently serving as Judge Ad Hoc of the International Court of Justice in the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v Myanmar).  She is also the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty based in Madrid, the President of the Advisory Council of the International Nuremburg Principles Academy and the Chair of the Quasi-Judicial Inquiry into Detention in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  In 1995, after the end of apartheid, Pillay was appointed acting judge on the South African High Court, and in the same year was elected by the UN General Assembly to be judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she served a total of eight years (1999-2003), the last four as President.  In 2003, she was appointed as a judge on the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where she served on the Appeals Chamber until 2008.  Ms Pillay was the first woman to start a law practice in her home province of Natal in 1967 and acted as a defence lawyer for anti-apartheid activists, exposing torture, and helping establish rights for prisoners on Robben Island.