Vera Gowlland-Debbas is Professor of Public International Law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. She has been an Honorary Professor at University College London, a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at Université Panthéon-Assas Paris II and the University of California at Berkeley.
She has acted as Counsel for the Arab League in the Wall case before the International Court of Justice. She received an American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for her 1990 book Collective Responses to Illegal Acts in International Law. United Nations Action in the Question of Southern Rhodesia.
She has also edited a number of books and published numerous articles primarily in the field of UN Security Council sanctions, refugee and human rights law, multilateral treaty-making, state responsibility and international courts.
She is a Docteur des sciences politiques (specializing in International Law), Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), and has a B.A. (with Distinction) in Political Science from the American University of Beirut.