John Dugard

John Dugard (born in 1936 in Fort Beaufort) is a South African professor of international law. He has served as Judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and as a Special Rapporteur for both the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has written extensively on South African apartheid.

Education

John Dugard earned his BA (1956) and LLB (1958) degrees at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and a further LLB (1965) and LL.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1980. Furthermore, John Dugard also holds a Diploma in International Law (1965) from the University of Cambridge.

Career

Academic

From 1975-1977, Dugard was the Dean and a Professor of Law at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). From 1978-1990, he was the Director of the University of Witwatersrand's Centre for Applied Legal Studies, "a research centre committed to the promotion of Human Rights in South Africa". He is a Professor of Law in the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria.

He has held visiting professorships at Princeton University, Duke University, UC Berkeley and University of Pennsylvania, and University of New South Wales (Australia).

He is a member of the Institut de Droit International.

Dugard was Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge from 1995-1997.

In 1998, Dugard was appointed Chair in Public International Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands and as Director of the Advanced LL.M. programme in Public International Law. In this capacity, Dugard also teaches a module on Public International Law, Capita Selecta.

International Law

He has, since 1997, served as a member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations. In 2000, he became its Special Rapporteur on Diplomatic Protection.

In 2000, he served as Judge ad hoc in the cases concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Burundi) (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda) and (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Rwanda) at the International Court of Justice.

He is currently a door tenant at 20 Essex Street Chambers in London, who specialise in Public International Law.

Dugard visited the Palestine Center in Washington DC in March 2009 and gave a lecture entitled "Apartheid and Occupation under International Law." The video and the transcript of the lecture were made available online. [2]

United Nations

Following the recurrence of the Palestinian intifada in late 2000, John Dugard was appointed as Chairman of a UN Commission on Human Rights inquiry commission on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. In 2001, he was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur to the commission on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967". He was charged with submitting annual reports and recommendations to the UN concerning the situation of international human rights and humanitarian law.

In its first special session in July 2006, the Human Rights Council dispatched an urgent fact-finding mission headed by Dugard to report on the situation in the Palestinian territories. On 26 September 2006, Dugard reported that the "standards of human rights in the Palestinian territories have fallen to intolerable new levels".

2007 Report

See also: Israel and the apartheid analogy

In a report released in February 2007, Dugard ”announced that Israel's policies resemble those of apartheid." "It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," says the report. Dugard also stated, "Discrimination against Palestinians occurs in many fields. Moreover, the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices, particularly those denying freedom of movement to Palestinians."

Referring to Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank, he wrote, "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose [...] is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

Critics noted that Dugard was appointed in 2001 as an unpaid expert by the UN Human Rights Commission to investigate only violations by the Israeli side. Israel and the U.S. therefore dismissed his reports as one-sided. Israel's UN ambassador in Geneva, Itzhak Levanon, said that the Palestinian terrorists, like al-Qaida, "intentionally target civilians with the mere purpose to kill. The fact that Professor Dugard is ignoring this essential fact, demonstrates his inability to use objectivity in his assessment. Professor Dugard will better serve the cause of peace by ceasing to enflame the hatred between Israelis and Palestinians, who have embarked on serious talks to solve this contentious situation." An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said it was "rank politicisation" of the UN's human rights apparatus. "This is the promoting of partisan, one-sided political attitudes which frankly don't serve the interests of anyone who is seriously interested in human rights."

Dugard also issued a report in 2008. In 2009 he was replaced by American professor of international relations Richard A. Falk.

Honors

John Dugard has honorary doctorates of law from the University of Cape Town, University of Natal, University of Port Elizabeth, University of Pretoria and the University of the Witwatersrand.

Selected bibliography

Books

• International Law: A South African Perspective 3rd Edition (2006) ISBN 0-7021-7121-2
• The Last Years of Apartheid: Civil Liberties in South Africa, with Nicholas Haysom, Gilbert Marcus (1992) ISBN 0-87124-145-5
• Recognition and the United Nations (1987) ISBN 0-521-46322-X
• Human Rights and the South African Legal Order (1978) ISBN 0-691-09236-2
• The South West Africa/Namibia Dispute (1973) ISBN 0-520-01886-9

Legal Briefings

• South West Africa and the International Court;: Two viewpoints on the 1971 advisory opinion (1973) ISBN B0006CGXB2
• Apartheid and human rights in South Africa: Techniques of implementation (1974) ISBN B0006WUI1I
• The denationalization of Black South Africans in pursuance of apartheid: A question for the International Court of Justice? (1984) ISBN 0-85494-832-5

Speeches

• The judicial process, positivism and civil liberty (1971) ISBN B0006COV9I
• Independent homelands: Failure of a fiction : 1979 presidential address (1979) ISBN B0006E8KNO
• A national strategy for 1980: Presidential address, 1980 (1980) ISBN 0-86982-183-0

Lectures

• Diplomatic Protection in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
• State Secession in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law

Textbooks

• International Criminal Law and Procedure, with Christine Van Den Wyngaert (1996) ISBN 1-85521-835-6
• Documents on International Law: Handbook for Law Students and Constitutional Lawyers, with Neville Botha, Patric M. Mtshaulana (1996) ISBN 0-7021-3532-1

External links

• Faculty Bio for John Dugard, University of Leiden, accessed 27 June 2006.