Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

This article is about the human rights expert. For the Cuban President, see Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred de Zayas, Potsdam, 2005
United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order
In office 2012–2018
Personal details
Born	(1947-05-31) 31 May 1947 Havana, Cuba
Nationality	United States and Swiss (since 2017)
Occupation	Human rights expert, law professor

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 31 May 1947, Havana, Cuba) is an American lawyer, writer, historian, expert in the field of human rights and international law and retired high-ranking United Nations official. Since 2012, he has been the UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order (appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council).

Early life

De Zayas was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in Chicago, Illinois (US). He earned his juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School, then a doctorate of philosophy in modern history from the University of Göttingen (Germany). He holds both US and Swiss citizenships.

He was also a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tübingen in Germany and research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. He worked with the United Nations from 1981 to 2003 as a senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chief of Petitions.

Since 1996, de Zayas has been married to Carolina Jolanda Edelenbos, a Dutch national and UN official, with whom he had a son, Stefan (deceased).

Scholarly work

De Zayas' work focuses inter alia on the judicial protection of peoples and minorities. He has written and lectured extensively on human rights, including the jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the US-run detention centers at Guantanamo Bay, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the expulsion of Eastern European Germans after the Second World War, the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974, the rights of minorities, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the rights of indigenous peoples. De Zayas' work into the expulsion of Germans from their areas in eastern Germany and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II is extensive.

De Zayas has written scholarly articles that were published in the Harvard International Law Journal, the UBC Law Review, the International Review of the Red Cross, the Netherlands International Law Review, the International Red Cross Review, the International Commission of Jurists Review, the Historical Journal and the East European History, to name but a few. He has co-authored and co-edited several books such as The International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms. De Zayas has published chapters in books "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe" co-edited by Steven Várdy, and Hunt Tooley. In "International Humanitarian Law: Origins", edited by John Carey, de Zayas wrote the chapter "Ethnic Cleansing, Applicable Norms, Emerging Jurisprudence, Implementable Remedies". His chapter in Spanish "El crimen contra la paz" was featured in the book "La Declaración de Luarca sobre el Derecho Humano a la Paz", edited by Carmen Rosa Rueda Castañón and Carlos Villán Durán.

De Zayas has written entries in the Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Oxford), the Encyclopedia of Human Rights (Oxford) and the Encyclopedia of Genocide (Macmillan), including entries on prominent personalities such as Simon Wiesenthal, Aryeh Neier, Kenneth Roth. Nelson Mandela, Raoul Wallenberg, Jose Ayala Lasso and Bertrand Ramcharan. He has also written on the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Spanish Civil War, the Guantanamo Naval Base and the Marshall Plan.

In 1975, he published a study in the Harvard International Law Journal, questioning the legality of the expulsion of possibly as many as 15 million Germans from their homes after World War II, invoking the Atlantic Charter, the Hague Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles. The article was followed by the book Nemesis at Potsdam (Routledge und Kegan Paul, 1977) which focused on what, if any, responsibility the British and U.S. governments had for decisions which purportedly led to the expulsions of these ethnic Germans.

In 1977 he published his first book, Nemesis at Potsdam, with the scholarly house Routledge in London and Boston, with a preface by Eisenhower's political advisor, Robert Murphy, a participant at the Potsdam conference. British historian Tony Howarth reviewed it in the Times educational Supplement : "a lucid, scholarly and compassionate study". Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz wrote in the American Journal of International law, "a persuasive commentary on the suffering which becomes inevitable when humanitarianIsm is subordinated to nationalism". The New Statesman "in his well researched, closely reasoned work, de Zayas leaves little doubt that there have been fee hostorical parallels to this record of modern mass atrocity". In the same year, an enlarged German edition was published by the legal publisher C. H. Beck, becoming a bestseller. In this book, Zayas took an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of "population transfers" and examined the situation of the ethnic Germans from both a historical and legal perspective.

De Zayas was reportedly the first American historian to address this topic. Deutsche Welle reported in 2007: "He wrote the first scholarly work on German expellees to appear in English, breaking what had long been a taboo topic." The German Federal Minister Heinrich Windelen wrote in the foreword to de Zayas's book Anmerkungen zur Vertreibung: "It is thanks to De Zayas that the debate on The Expulsion has been reopened [...] In the subsequent period, a number of authors have drawn on the work of De Zayas. Thus, he has contributed significantly to the fact that discussion of The Expulsion is no longer considered taboo." According to a doctoral thesis on the historiography of the expulsion, "de Zayas was one of the earliest 'respectable' academics to take up the cause of the expellees... De Zayas does not mention the Holocaust, the Jews, or any other minority ethnic groups that suffered under the Nazis except in passing." Professor Doerr in the Dalhousie Review notes: "De Zayas does not ignore the enormity of the crimes committed by Germans during the course of the war, nor does he deny that an anti-German feeling was natural and that punishment was justified, He does, however, question whether one set of crimes justified a second... whether revenge ... was not only extended to the guilty but to the innocent, whether expulsion itself was a crime ...While critical of western leadership, de Zayas leaves no doubt about the agents of the crime-- the Soviet leaders. ...Praised must be de Zayas's reopening of this largely neglected aspect of modern German history." Dalhousie Review, vol. 57, No. 3, Autumn 1977, pp. 582–584. The doctoral dissertation of Dr. Robert Bard, "Historical Memory of the expulsion of ethnic Germans in Europe 1944-1947", University of Hertfordshire, relies heavily on "Nemesis at Potsdam" and "A Terrible Revenge", July 1999.

His second book, written with Walter Rabus, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, was published in Germany by Universitas/Langen Müller, in 1979, and the English translation by de Zayas himself by the University of Nebraska Press in 1989. This describes some of the work of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle, a special section of the legal department of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, which investigated Allied and German war crimes. The authors argue that the Bureau carefully investigated war crimes and was largely free of Nazi ideology. De Zayas was the first researcher to work with the 226 extant volumes (about half of the total, the rest apparently having been burned in Langensalza, Germany, near the end of the war.). The book was savagely attacked in the media of the Soviet Union and its satellites. In a review of the book in the Cambridge Law Journal, Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Christopher Greenwood considered the book to be "excellent" and that "the authors deserve the gratitude of all those interested in the laws of war but unable to read German for bringing out an English edition." He goes on to add that "Throughout the book the authors emphasize that all the cases they examined have to be seen against the background of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the German armed forces and SS." In the Fletcher Forum, Alfred Rubin stated that "De Zayas is undoubtedly one of the world's leading legal scholars addressing forced population transfers ... [his] work provides massive confirmation of the truism that atrocities are committed in war by all sides, that many go unpunished, and some are part of national policy....the possibility that truth might be misused in argument by the devil is not a reason to suppress truth. I have no personal doubt that this book is a useful attempt to preserve an important truth. By writing it, the author -- whose own humanitarian sympathies are beyond question, as is Levie's scholarly detachment --has done a service to scholarship." Dieter Fleck, in Archiv des Voelkerrechts, underlined that "this well-written book is based on thorough research of original sources."

His third book was A Terrible Revenge, The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950, published in the United States in 1993 by Palgrave Macmillan and in Germany in 1986. According to Robert Bard, this book "was, as [de Zayas] says, written 'to generate interest in this hitherto ignored tragedy [the German ethnic expulsions] and lead to a new respect for these forgotten victims and to more compassion and understanding for our neighbours.' De Zayas in his introduction states that the book originated in a 1981 'prime-time television broadcast in Germany' which dealt with the expulsions, and in which he took part." The book was described as "problematic" by historians Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer. The Historian Matthias Stickler, reviewed it positively in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and called it "fast ein Klassiker" (almost a classic). reviewing a later edition, historian Henry Stanhope wrote in the Times (London) "De Zayas's moving plea is that one's home should be a human right. As frontiers once more shift in Eastern Europe and families flee in Bosnia, he could hardly have chosen a better moment to deliver it."

The review by Bernward Dörner in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it as an "attempt to deny contemporary perceptions of genocide", while the Frankfurter magazine Menschenrechte (Human Rights) called it a "ein gelungenes wissenschaftliches Werk, umfassend in seiner Kontextualisierung, und verdient eine breite öffentliche Diskussion, ohne Tabus." (a successful scholarly work, comprehensive in contextualizing the events and deserving of broad public discussion without taboos". (Nr 1/2011 "Menschenrechte" Frankfurt a.M. p.. 29: Dr. Gunther Nitsch in the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung praised it as thoroughly researched book with sources and proofs to establish that a wide majority of the German population did not know and could not have known about the systematic murder of six million Jews.(3. September 2011, S. 23.).

Historian Ernest Fisher reviewed it in the US Army magazine Army "The author has given the history of these expulsions a dramatic immediacy through a series of eyewitness accounts ...The remarkable sequel to this recital of inhumanity is that this displaced population has, in the 50 years since the war, managed to find a new home in a reunited Germany where nearly 20 percent of the population is made up of first- or second-generation descendants of these exiled millions." De Zayas' book Nemesis at Potsdam, likewise received a positive review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung by Historian Patrick Sutter.

Publishers Weekly noted: "De Zayas, a lawyer, historian and human rights expert specializing in refugees and minorities, has uncovered testimony in German and American archives detailing these atrocities, adding a new chapter to the annals of human cruelty. His carefully documented book serves as a reminder that many different peoples have been subjected to ethnic cleansing."

In 1994 he co-authored with Prof. Cherif Bassiouni, The Protection of Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice. Transnational Publishers, New York and UN Centre for Human Rights, Geneva.

In 2009, de Zayas in collaboration with Justice Jakob Möller published the book United Nations Human Rights Committee Case Law 1977-2008. The first Chairman of the Human Rights Committee, Andreas Mavrommatis, wrote a fine preface for the handbook. The book was formally presented at a reception on 15 July 2009 at the Château de Penthes in Geneva, attended by many prominent members of the Human Rights Committee. In a review published in the UN Special magazine by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan, the latter offered the following description of the book: "It is staggering how much the Human Rights Committee has influenced the human rights jurisprudence of the world, as is striking from reading this exceedingly important book.... From the outset of its work in 1977 there have been two Secretariat pioneers in developing the case law of the Committe when it considers petitions from individuals claiming violations of their rights: Jakob Möller (Iceland) and Alfred de Zayas (USA). Möller was the first Chief of the Petitions branch of what is today the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and de Zayas was his colleague, who eventually suceeded him as Chief. ...Every lawyer, every judge, every public-spirited citizen will want to consult this fascinating book, because it tells us what is legally right and legally wrong, how to judge our governments, our societies, our United Nations and ourselves."

His 2011 book Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis (Genocide as State Secret) with a substantive preface by Karl Doehring, Director of the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg, explored the issue of who knew what when about the Holocaust. He is the first historian to have reviewed the issue in the light of published and unpublished Nuremberg documents, and in the light of interviews with Nuremberg prosecutors and defense attorneys, Holocaust survivors as well as German military judges and politicians. He argued that the policy of exterminating the Jews was "Geheimereichssache" , and treated pursuant to Hitler's Order Nr. 1 (Führerbefehl Nr. 1) as a "state secret". Accordingly, although there were diffuse rumours about killings, no one except a very limited number of persons knew exactly what was going on. The German magazine Menschenrechte in a long review (no. 1, 2011, p. 29) wrote: "methodoligically de Zayas is impeccable. He evaluates prudently and walks the reader through the Nuremberg records, the documentation of the Manstein trial, interviews with prosecutors and defense counsel. He is the first scholar to systematically examine the Nuremberg documents on the issue who knew what when and how much about the Holocaust. He confronts witnesses with their testimonies and pokes further. This is a solid scholarly work."

Historians Dan Diner and Joel Golb write that the tendency of "allow[ing] the Germans to perceive themselves also as victims" is "manifest in the work of the best-selling author Alfred-Maurice de Zayas". A 2004 article in the scholarly journal German History describes his work as being "entertained enthusiastically at meetings of compatriot organizations, [but] brought very little that was new into academic discussion." Nottingham Trent University Bill Niven writes that de Zayas is "often cited in support of the comparability thesis", i.e. the argument that crimes committed by Germany during the war were equivalent to crimes committed against it. A review of his The German Expellees in the scholarly journal Central European History describes it as having a "distinctively revisionist flavour", "consist[ing] of some highly dubious platitudes", "resort[ing] to unwarranted hyperbole", and wrongfully claiming that previous scholars have ignored the evidence on this period.

Civic activities

De Zayas was co-president, with Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre, of the Association Suisses et Internationaux de Genève from 1996 to 2006.

Memberships

• Amnesty International
• Geneva-based Club de la Presse
• International Association of American Minorities
• Académie Internationale de Droit Constitutionel (Tunis)
• Corps Rhenania Tübingen
• German World Alliance
• United Nations Christian Association

Activism

Since the 1979's de Zayas has also focused on the then still relatively little known genocide against the Armenians, Greeks of Pontos and Assyro-Chaldeans under the Ottoman Empire before and during the First World War and continuing during the Turkish Republic. He participated in a genocide conference at the University of Pittsburgh in March 2000 and published the chapter "The first genocide of the twentieth century" in the Columbia University book "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe" edited by Professor Steven Vardy, in 2005 he spoke at the American University in Yerevan, Armenia, a lecture which resulted in Zayas' book "the Genocide against the Armenians." In 2007 he published an article on "The Istanbul Pogrom of September 1955." He advocates the creation of a Constitutional Convention for Cyprus and published a proposal together with Professors Malcolm Shaw and Andreas Auer and published relevant articles in the Cyprus Yearbook of International Law 2006 and 2007. In 2011 he published a chapter on the Ottoman genocide of Christian Minorities in the 2011 book edited by Tessa Hofmann, "the Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks" (Caratzas, New York, pp. 311– 341), and in 2019 participated in the international genocide conference in Athens, where he delivered two papers

de Zayas is an active member of many ngo's and has been in the a avant-garde of the movement to recognize Peace as a human rights.

For decades de Zayas has taken on the causes of "unsung victims", among them the Mujahedin of Iran, in particular the MEK members held in camps Ashraf I, II and III. In July 2019 Zayas joined European dignitaries in showing their solidarity with the victims of the Mullahs. He has also been on several UN Panels dealing with the human rights situation of the Iranian people and condemning decades of impunity.

de Zayas has called for a peaceful solution to the dispute between India and Pakistan in accordance with pertinent UN resolutions and the right of self-determination of the Kashmiris.

de Zayas has advocated the rights of many minorities and indigenous peoples to autonomy and self-determination in United Nations fora and before parliamentarians in the European Parliament, including the Armenians of Nagorno Karabagh, the Saharaoui population of Western Sahara, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Bubis of the Island of Bioko/Equatorian Guinea, the Catalans of Spain, and the Igbos and Ogonis of Nigeria.

de Zayas is an advocate of the human right to peace, and of the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and a World Court on Human Rights. Since his early retirement from the UN in 2003, de Zayas has become a vocal critic of the 2003 Iraq War indefinite detention in Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons, nuclear pollution, and extreme poverty. In 2015, he was condemned for saying the November 2015 Paris attacks were caused by the United States, Western colonialism, capitalism, and "Israeli settlers" and "a response to grave injustices and ongoing abuses perpetrated by the dominant, primarily developed countries, against populations of less developed countries".

On 29 September 2017, de Zayas, alongside another UN independent commissioner, David Kaye, issued a statement in which they considered the attitude of the Spanish government as "violating fundamental individual rights, limiting the flow of public information at such a critical moment for the Spanish democracy" during the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.

De Zayas is a registered Republican voter, although he supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. Writing in 2018, he has criticised "Antifa" activists, saying "They engage in 'hate speech' against those who cite the Bible to oppose the imposition of gender and LGBT ideologies"; and has described a "new wave of totalitarianism is sweeping through Germany with the collusion of the mainstream media" originating in the 1968 student revolts, which leads the "mainstream media" to be biased towards topics such as "multiculturalism" and against groups such as Pegida. On several occasions de Zayas has been invited as an expert before German courts and before the Rechtsausschuss (legal committee) of the German Bundestag, invited by the CDU/CSU. In 2019 he spoke as an expert before the Menschenrechtsausschuss (Human Rights Committee) of the Bundestag, in March on the issue of humanitarian aid, in September on the issue of impunity. On this occasion de Zayas was invited as an expert by the AfD to speak on multilateralism in the 21st century, a lecture which he gave in the aula maxima of the University of Tuebingen in May, 2019.

United Nations Independent Expert

In 2012, de Zayas was elected as the Independent Expert by the Human Rights Council, after being nominated by the President of the council, Laura Dupuy. His appointment led to some controversy; the NGO UN Watch reported several of his controversial comments. For example, they noted he had described the Nuremberg trials a "Pharisee tribunal".

He presented his first report to the UN Human Rights Council at its 21st session in September 2012, calling for uniform application of international law. On 2 November 2012, he presented his interim report to the UN General Assembly in New York. Doc. A/67/277. On 10 September 2013 he presented his second report to the Human Rights Council A/HRC/24/38, and, in October 2013 his second report to the GA . A/68/284, to the UN General Assembly exploring initiatives and enforcement mechanisms to further advance a democratic and equitable international order.

The Swiss cartoonist Philippe Becquelin (Mix&Remix) devoted one of his cartoons to Alfred de Zayas.

On 10 September 2014, his third report, A/HRC/27/51.[99] to the council. On 27 October 2014, he presented his third report to the General Assembly on the right to self-determination (A/69/272) In the press release issued the following day, he stated: "The realization of the right of self-determination is essential to maintaining local, regional and international peace and must be seen as an important conflict-prevention strategy."

On 10 September 2015 he presented his fourth report to the Council on the adverse human rights impacts of free trade and investment agreements on a democratic and equitable international order, and on 26 October 2015 to the General Assembly on the issue of investor state dispute settlement. The main observations of these reports were reported by news outlets such as Reuters, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Russia Today (RT), and The Independent. In 2015, the US based magazine of global politics, Foreign Policy, consulted with the UN Independent Expert on the application of the right to self-determination in the Indonesian region of West Papua.

During his mandate, he addressed multiple contemporary world issues, welcoming the Arms Trade Treaty and urging States to regulate not only trade but also production of arms. In 2015, following a press release, de Zayas urged trade negotiators to address the Doha Round commitments to promote equal and fair trade at the Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.The Guardian published his op-ed on adverse human rights impacts of free trade and investment agreements. In the following year, the UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order submitted his report on the adverse impact of World Bank policies on human rights and the realisation of a democratic and equitable international order to the UN Human Rights Council. On 21 July 2017, de Zayas presented his last report to the UN General Assembly on the human rights impact of IMF policies and practice. The report was sent to the UN Human Rights Council on 25 January 2018. On 15 March 2018, he formulated his 23 principles of international order.

In 2017, a 1982 photo of de Zayas in blackface which he had posted on his website was described as "racist and offensive" by UN Watch. On his website, the photo caption reads: "Ten years later Mardi Gras in Geneva, 1982 - imitating Al Jolson,the jazz singer, celebrating UNESCO world intangible heritage of mankind - Colombia's inter-racial Carneval de los Negros y los Blancos - https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/carnaval-de-negros-y-blancos-00287".

On 25 February 2018, The UN Independent Expert issued a memorandum that states: "I have come to understand that the lawful political status of the Hawaiian Islands is that of a sovereign nation-state in continuity; but a nation state that is under a strange form of occupation by the United States resulting from an illegal military occupation and fraudulent annexation. As such, international laws (The Hague and Geneva Conventions) require that governance and legal matters within the occupied territory of the Hawaiian Islands must be administered by the application of laws by the occupied state (in this case, the Hawaiian Kingdom) not the domestic laws of the occupier (the United States)."

de Zayas was the first UN rapporteur to visit Venezuela in 21 years. Annex I to his report lists the interviews conducted with government officials, members of the opposition, chamber of commerce, churches and more than 30 ngo's. The published comments of the Venezuelan government on the report acknowledged the efforts of the rapporteur to meet all relevant stakeholders and convene UN and other agencies with a view to addressing the economic and emigration crisis. The comments indicate that the government accepts most of the expert's recommendations, record that in December 80 detainees were released and that new cooperation agreements with UN agencies were signed, as proposed by the expert. At the presentation of the report on 10 September 2018, Fundalatin, the oldest Venezuelan human rights non-governmental organization, established in 1978, welcomed the report and its findings. Its President, María Russian, stated: “We share the warning of this expert from the UN who has been able to confirm that the issue of the humanitarian crisis is a technical term that is being used unduly and irresponsibly – through an intense media campaign – as a pretext to justify a military intervention in Venezuela”. She noted that, "it is essential to study the causes of the economic crisis in Venezuela, such as the financial blockade and the sanctions imposed on the country, which are directly and indirectly affecting the lack of food, medicines such as insulin, antiretrovirals. ...We cannot speak of a humanitarian crisis in a country that has allocated 2 million homes, in which not a single university has been closed, neither public nor private, in which 100% of pensions have been given to the senior citizens”.

Several other ngo's including the Grupo Sures (which groups some 50 Venezuelan ngo's), and the Red Nacional de Derechos Humanos, endorsed the report. The findings and conclusions of Zayas were well received by academics including Professors Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and Mark Weisbrot, who in April 2019 published a study on the human rights impact of sanctions on Venezuela.

On 26 April 2019 the Independent (UK) reported on the reports by Sachs/Weisbrot, which confirmed the UN report by Zayas. Canadian economist Joe Emersberger cited the report in numerous articles, as did Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies and Professor Dan Kovalik. In January 2019 the Third World Network published an updated article on the issues.

The report, however, was also severely criticized. Indeed, more than eighty Venezuelan organizations questioned de Zayas' conclusions that there was not a humanitarian crisis in the country. In a public statement, the organizations denounced that before finishing his mission in Venezuela and without having processed the information provided by the organizations, de Zayas formed an opinion prematurely and assumed the government's point of view, which blames the "economic warfare" and "blockade" for the food and medical supplies shortages. The organizations denounced that in two years, among twenty two experts from twelve international organizations, de Zayas' report was the only one to deny the humanitarian crisis in the country. Alí Daniels, director of the NGO Acceso a la Justicia (Access to Justice), declared that Venezuelan and Ecuadorian organizations concluded that since the mission was not prepared according to independence standards of the United Nations, it could not reach valid or acceptable conclusions for the UN Human Rights Council. Daniels argued that this lack of balance was demonstrated in his report, where twelve pages are dedicated to Venezuela and only two and a half to Ecuador.

During the 167th session of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, during a discussion of health and nutrition in Venezuela, the Venezuelan state representative screened an interview by state broadcaster Telesur with de Zayas, in which he assured the audience there was not a humanitarian crisis in the country and that to solve the economic problems the "economic war" must end and that the "economic sanctions placed by the U.S., Canada and the European Union" should be lifted. Nutrition expert Susana Raffalli, advisor to PROVEA and Caritas Organization of Venezuela, voiced her concern, noting that de Zayas was only one out of forty rapporteurs, and declaring that during his visit to the country and after meeting with civil society organizations, de Zayas only took pictures of the counter of the charcuterie in front of his hotel. Raffalli also added that by then, four United Nations rapporteurs declared about the "grave" situation in the country.

Literary endeavors

Apart from his scholarly work in the fields of history and law, de Zayas has published poetry in English, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch, has translated the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke into English, French, and Spanish, and has translated works by Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse into English.

As a member of the International Rainer Maria Rilke Society of Sierre, Switzerland, de Zayas published the first English-language translation of Rilke's "Larenopfer", 90 poems dedicated to Rilke's homeland of Bohemia and his home city of Prague Zayas has lectured on Rilke in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Canada. On 2 May 2011, he delivered a lecture at the Salon du Livre de Genève (Geneva bookfair) on "Rilke, poète de la Heimat"

He has published in the literary journal of the PEN Club Suisse Romande L'Escarpe (renamed 2008 Pages Littéraires) in 2007-08. A member of International PEN since 1989, he was Secretary-General of the Centre Swiss Romande of PEN PEN Club in 2002–06, and its president 2006–10; 2010-13 he was a member of the Centre's executive committee, and in 2013 was again elected President through 2017. Zayas was coordinator of the three Swiss PEN Centres Switzerland 2008–10, and, again, 2013-14. De Zayas served for fifteen years as president of the United Nations Society of Writers, Geneva.

From 1990 to 2005 he was president of the United Nations Society of Writers (UNSW) and editor-in-chief and founder of its literary journal Ex Tempore. In December 2017 he was reelected editor-in-chief of Ex Tempore.

Awards

• "Ehrengabe zum Georg Dehio Preis" in Esslingen in 1980,
• "Dr. Walter-Eckhardt-Ehrengabe für Zeitgeschichtsforschung" ("Dr. Walter Eckhardt Award for Contemporary History") from Ingolstadt Research Institute for Contemporary History in 2001
• Cultural Prize (Kulturpreis) of the city of Geislingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) for his Rilke and Hesse translations, 2008
• Educator's Award 2011 by the teacher- and civil society organization Canadians for Genocide Education (CGE), on 31 March 2011, at the University of Toronto.

On 26 July 2008, de Zayas was awarded the Cultural Prize (Kulturpreis) of the city of Geislingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) for his Rilke and Hesse translations.

De Zayas was awarded the Educator's Award 2011 by the teacher- and civil society organization Canadians for Genocide Education (CGE), on 31 March 2011, at the University of Toronto.

Selected works

Books

• 80 Thesen zur Vertreibung. Aufarbeiten anstatt Verdrängen, together with Konrad Badenheuer, Verlag Inspiration, London and Berlin, 2019: ISBN 978-3-945127-29-2
• Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis [Genocide as State Secret], Olzog Verlag, München, 2011; ISBN 978-3-7892-8329-1
• The Genocide against the Armenians and the relevance of the 1948 Genocide Convention, Beirut, Lebanon: Haigazian University Press, 2010; ISBN 978-9953-475-15-8
• The United Nations Human Rights Committee Case Law 1977-2008 (together with Jakob Th. Möller), N.P.Engel Publishers, Kehl/Strasbourg, 2009; ISBN 978-3-88357-144-7
• 50 Thesen zur Vertreibung London/Berlin: Verlag Inspiration Un Limited, 2008; ISBN 978-3-9812110-0-9 (50 Theses on the Expulsion of the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, Verlag Inspiration Un Ltd.: London and Berlin, 2012; ISBN 978-3-9812110-4-7
• Rainer Maria Rilke. Die Larenopfer Bilingual English-German edition with commentary. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2005; ISBN 1-59709-010-7; second revised edition with a preface by Ralph Freedman, 2008.
• International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms (with Gudmundur Alfredsson and Bertrand Ramcharan). The Hague: Kluwer, 2001; ISBN 90-411-1445-9. New revised edition, Brill 2009; ISBN 978-90-04-16236-5.
• Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht Universitas Verlag, 2001; ISBN 3-8004-1416-3
• Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East Routledge (1979) ISBN 978-0897253604; 7th ed. Rockland, Maine: Picton Press, 2003; ISBN 0-89725-360-4. 14. revised German edition Die Nemesis von Potsdam, Herbig, Munich 2005.
• A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994; ISBN 1-4039-7308-3; second revised edition, Palgrave/Macmillan, New York 2006.
• The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 (with Walter Rabus). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989; ISBN 0-8032-9908-7. New revised edition with Picton Press, Rockland, Maine; ISBN 0-89725-421-X. German edition: Die Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle, 7th revised and enlarged edition Universitas/Langen Müller, Munich 2001; 8th revised and enlarged edition Lindenbaum Verlag, 2012; ISBN 978-3-938176-39-9.
• The Protection of Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice (with Cherif Bassiouni). New York: Transnational Publishers, 1994 ISBN 094-1-320-87-1.

Articles and chapters

• 4 entries in Dinah Shelton (ed.) Encyclopedia of Genocide. Macmillan Reference, 2005, "Aggression", "Ismael Enver", "Nelson Mandela", "Raoul Wallenberg".ISBN 978-00-28-65847-6.
• 6 entries in David Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights (Oxford 2009): P.E.N. International and Human Rights, Jose Ayala Lasso, Aryeh Nyer, Kenneth Roth, Simon Wiesenthal and Bertrand Ramcharan; ISBN 978-0-19-533402-9.
• 18 entries in the Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, edited by Rudolf Bernhardt, Amsterdam: Elsevier, Vol. 1–5, 1992–2003, including "Amnesty Clause", "United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights", "Combatants", "Spanish Civil War", "Population Expulsion", "Repatriation", "Open Towns", "Curzon Line", "United States Dependent Territories", "European Recovery Program", "Westphalia, Peace of", etc ISBN 0 444 86246 3
• 6 entries in the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, edited by Rüdiger Wolfrum, Oxford, 2012, including "Forced Popultion Transfer", "Guantanamo Naval Base", "Marshall Plan",ISBN 978-0-19-929168-7
• "The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights" in Helmut Volger (ed.) Concise Encyclopaedia of the United Nations, The Hague: Kluwer, 2002 (2nd revised edition 2009).
• "Peace" in William Schabas (ed.) Cambridge Companion to International Criminal Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016 ISBN 978-1-107-69568-9
• "Freedom of Opinion and Freedom of Expression" (together with Aurea Rolda) in the Netherlands International Law Review vol. LIX, 2012, pp. 425–55
• "Die amerikanische Besetzung Guantánamos", Institut für Rechtspolitik an der Universität Trier, Rechtspolitisches Forum Nr. 28, 2005, ISSN 1616-8828.
• "Ethnic Cleansing: Applicable Norms, Emerging Jurisprudence, Implementable Remedies" in John Carey (ed.) International Humanitarian Law: Origins, New York: Transnational Press, 2003, pp. 283–307.
• "The Follow-up Procedure of the UN Human Rights Committee" in International Commission of Jurists Review, no. 47, 1991.
• "The Illegal Implantation of Turkish Settlers in Occupied Northern Cyprus" in Gilbert Gornig (ed.), Iustitia et Pax, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2008, pp. 721–31.ISBN 978-3-428-12745-0
• "The Istanbul Pogrom of 6–7 September 1955 in the Light of International Law" in Genocide Studies and Prevention, vol. 2, no. 2 (August 2007) pp. 137–55.ISSN 1911-0359
• "Karl Ernst Smidt" in Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland, Aurich, 2007.{{ISBN|3-932206-62-2}
• "Der Krieg im ehemaligen Yugoslawien aus völkerrechtlicher Sicht" in Tilman Zülch (ed.) "Ethnische Säuberung-Völkermord", Hamburg: Luchterhand (1993).
• "Minority Rights in the New Millennium" in The Geneva Post Quarterly, May 2007, pp. 155–208.ISSN 1422-2248
• "Normes morales et normes juridiques. Concurrence ou conciliation" in Anne Sophie Millet-Devalle (ed.), Religions et Droit International Humanitaire, Paris: Editions Pedone, 2007, pp. 81–87.ISBN 978-2-233-00535-9
• "Der Nürnberger Prozess" in Alexander Demandt "Macht und Recht", Munich: C.H. Beck, 1996.ISBN 3 406 39282 2
• "The potential for US ratification and enforcement of the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights". Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol. 20, 1990. pp. 299–310.ISSN 0046-578X
• "The Procedures and Case-Law of the United Nations Human Rights Committee" in Carlos Jiménez Piernas, The Legal Practice in International Law and European Community Law, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007.
• "Desarrollo jurisprudencial del Comité de Derechos Humanos" in Carlos Jiménez Piernas, "Iniciación a la práctica en Derecho Internacional y Derecho comunitario europeo", Marcial Pons, Barcelona 2003, ISBN 84-9768-069-3
• "The Right to One's Homeland, Ethnic Cleansing and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia", Criminal Law Forum, 1995, pp. 257–314.
• "Reflections on Law and Justice" in Diva International, N. 3, 2019, Geneva ISSN 1660-1934
• "Ethnic Cleansing 1945 and Today: Observations on its Illegality and implications" in Steven Vardy (ed.), Ethnic Cleansing in 20th century Europe New York, Columbia University Press ISBN 0-88033-995-0
• "Selbstbestimmungsrecht und Vereinten Nationen" in Hans-Joachim Heintze (ed.) Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker Bonn, Dietz Verlag, 1997 ISBN 3-8012-0247-X
• "A historic survey of twentieth century expulsions" in Anna Bramwell (ed.) Refugees in the Age of Total War, Boston, Unwyn Hyman, 1988 ISBN 0-04-445194-6
• "The Ottoman genocide of the Greeks" in Tessa Hoffman (ed.)The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks, New York, Caratzas, 2011 ISBN 978-0-89241-615-8
• "Le comité des droits de l'homme et le defi de Guantanamo" in Ben Aissa (ed.) Mélanges offeerts au Doyen Abdelfattah Amor Tunis, Centre de Publications Universitaires, 2005 ISBN 9973-37-282-4
• "La dérogation et le comité des droits de l'homme" in Daniel Premont (ed.)Droits Intangibles et Droits de l'Homme Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1996 ISBN 2-8027-0766-3
• "Les Arménians et le droit au recours" in Politique Internationale, Revue trimestrielle, No. 147, Paris ISSN 0221-2781
• "Préface" to the collection of poems by Camilo Pallasco and Françoise Mianda, Le jeu des mots. Poèmes Editions de la Maison Rouge, Cossonay ISBN 978-2-940410-36-1

See also

• List of peace activists

External links

• Official website
• Template:Https://dezayasalfred.wordpress.com
• Template:Www.extempore.ch

Further reading

• Jourdan, Par Alain (26 March 2019). "L'insoumis Alfred de Zayas jette son dernier pavé". tdg.ch/ (in French). Retrieved 26 March 2019. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Alfred de Zayas, el experto de la ONU con aire "procastrista" que visita Venezuela". El Cooperante (in Spanish). 27 November 2017. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
• "Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens". The Independent. 26 January 2019. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
• "Former U.N. Expert: The U.S. Is Violating International Law by Attempting a Coup in Venezuela". Democracy Now. 24 January 2019. Retrieved 26 March 2019.