Emeritus Professor Theo van Boven
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Theo van Boven is Emeritus Professor of International Law at the International and European Law Department of University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. He was Special Rapporteur on Torture of the UN Commission on Human Rights until December 2004. He was Head of the Dutch Delegation during the UN Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of the International Criminal Court (Rome 1998).
Professor van Boven was the first Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1994). From 1986 to 1991, he was an expert member of the UN Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Special Rapporteur on the on the right to restitution, compensation and rehabilitation of gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
From 1977 to 1982, he served as Director of the Division of Human Rights of the UN Secretariat. He was also President of the Netherlands Association of International Law; a member of the International Commission of Jurists; and a member of the Board of the International Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism.
His educational background includes: Master of Comparative Law (Dallas, Texas 1960); Doctor of Law (University of Leiden, 1967); and Doctor Honoris Causa (Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, 1988, University of New York at Buffalo, 1991). He has received the Louise Weiss Prize (Strasbourg, 1982), the Right Livelihood Honorary Award (Stockholm, 1985), and the Eitinger Prize (Oslo, 2005). He was also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (1987) and at New York University Law School (1990). He has written extensively on international human rights and humanitarian law.