Judge Fausto Pocar of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to Speak at Pacific McGeorge School of Law
February 14, 2005For Immediate Release - February 14, 2005
Contact: Janet Konttinen, 916.739.7047, cell 916.216.6362
On Wednesday, February 23 at 4:00pm in the California Room of the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law Library, Judge Fausto Pocar will deliver a public lecture entitled “The Ad Hoc International Criminal Tribunals: Challenges and Lessons”. Since February 2000, he has served as a Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, initially as a Judge in the Trial Chamber, where he sat on the first case concerning rape as a crime against humanity. He then later served in the Appeals Chamber.
Judge Pocar is also a Judge of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. On appeal, he has participated in the adoption of the final judgments in several Yugoslavian and Rwandan cases, both heard at The Hague and Arusha. Since March 2003 he has held the position of Vice President of the ICTY.
A Professor of International Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Milan, Judge Pocar also has a long history of working in the United Nations, particularly in the field of human rights and humanitarian law. For 16 years he served as a member of the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has been its Chairman and Rapporteur.
A Special Representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya and the Russian Federation during the first conflict in the mid-1990’s, Judge Pocar was also a member of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
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