Payam Akhavan

Payam Akhavan (Persian: پیام اخوان) is an international lawyer and professor at McGill University in Montreal. He is a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague [1] and a designated arbitrator/conciliator at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank Group.[2] He was previously Legal Advisor to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the Hague and Special Advisor to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Historical Clarification Commission for Guatemala, the UN Transitional Authority in East Timor, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal Task Force of the Royal Government of Cambodia, and the Fujimori Investigative Commission of the Peruvian Congress.[3][4][5][6] He also served as UN human rights officer in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia during the Yugoslav war and was appointed to missions of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) by the European Community Presidency.[3][4][5][6] He has served as legal counsel in cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States.[7][8][9][10] Akhavan currently acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Payam Akhavan
Born
Iran
Alma mater
OccupationLawyer and professor

Early life and career

Akhavan was born in Iran and moved in his childhood to Toronto, Canada due to the persecution of the Bahá'í religious minority before the Iranian revolution. He has worked in international criminal law and global justice.[11] Akhavan earned his Bachelor of Law (LLB) (1989) from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto and his Master of Law (LLM) (1990) and Doctor of the Science of Jurisprudence (SJD) (2001) from Harvard Law School. His doctoral thesis Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning, and the Ultimate Crime was published by Cambridge University Press.[12]

Academic work

Akhavan is an associate professor of International Law and former Boulton Senior Fellow at McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal.[13] He served as the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at The Hague.[14] He also authored the "Report on the Work of the Office of the UN Special Advisor on Prevention of Genocide" in 2005.[15] In 2013, he was interviewed by BBC's flagship program HardTalk, and in 2014 he delivered the Vancouver Human Rights Lecture,[16] which was broadcast on CBC Radio One's Ideas.[17] He delivered the 2017 CBC Massey Lectures, In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey, which ran from September 13 to October 4 in five different Canadian cities.[18] His companion book was the number one bestselling non-fiction book in Canada.[19] He is currently a member of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative Advisory Council, a project of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis to establish the world’s first treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.

International courts and tribunals

He also served as counsel before the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission.[20] He was counsel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Case Concerning Application of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Georgia v Russia) concerning allegations of "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia during the August 2008 armed conflict between Georgia and Russia.[21] Additionally he is also counsel to Libya before the ICC in the case concerning Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah Al-Senussi whether the ICC or Libyan courts will prosecute allegations of crimes against humanity arising from the 2011 revolution against Muammar Gaddafi.[22][23]

In 2013 he acted as counsel for Japan in the Whaling in the Antarctic Case brought by Australia before the ICJ alleging that Japan's program of scientific research was commercial whaling in disguise.[7][24] In 2008, he was counsel to Sheikh Hasina while she was imprisoned to avoid her participation in national elections. He campaigned for her release.[25] In 2016, the Kurdistan Regional Government asked him to help establish a truth commission to investigate and document ISIS crimes against Yazidis in northern Iraq.[26] He is among the counsel for The Gambia in the Rohingya genocide case filed in 2019 against Myanmar before the ICJ.[27]

Iran human rights advocacy

Payam Akhavan co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre to establish a record of the Islamic Republic's human rights abuses and promote individual accountability for crimes.[28] He served as Steering Committee member and Prosecutor of the Iran People's Tribunal, a victim-based truth commission and informal court in exile, to expose the mass-executions of political prisoners in Iran during the 1980s.[29][30] This includes Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa for the mass-execution of some 5,000 people in the summer of 1988.[31][32] Akhavan appeared in the documentary The Green Wave[33] and has testified before the European Parliament, United States Commissions, and the Canadian Parliament, advocating non-violent democratic transitions, emphasis on human rights rather than the nuclear issue, targeted sanctions against human rights abusers, and firmly opposing war.[34]

He has collaborated Shirin Ebadi on Iran human rights issues, including an opinion piece in the Washington Post.[35][36][37] He was the academic supervisor of Nargess Tavassolian, Shirin Ebadi's daughter, during her graduate studies at McGill University. In August 2008, the Iranian Government press made the "accusation" that "Nargess Tavassolian converted to Bahá'ísm in 2007 under the direction of Payam Akhavan and started her activities in the Association for Bahá'í Studies" amidst death threats against Ebadi for "serving the foreigners and the Baha'is."[38]

References
  2. "ICSID Arbitrator/Conciliator". icsid.worldbank.org. Retrieved 14 May 2018.
  3. http://www.icty.org/x/cases/erdemovic/acjug/en/erd-asojmcd971007e.pdf
  4. "Faculty - Visiting - 2002-03 | University of Toronto Faculty of Law". www.law.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  5. "'Struggling for justice': How Payam Akhavan lost his home in Iran and found human rights | CBC Radio". CBC. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  6. Ditmars, Hadani. "Meeting pioneering war-crimes prosecutor Payam Akhavan". alaraby. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  7. "Japan attacks Australian role in whaling 'moral crusade'". The Guardian. London. 3 July 2013.
  8. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 July 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2018.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. "Tripoli vs. The Hague: two courts vie to try Gadhafi's son - Macleans.ca". Macleans.ca. 23 May 2012. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  10. "HUDOC - European Court of Human Rights". hudoc.echr.coe.int. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  11. "Reducing Genocide to Law: A Probing Reflection on Empathy and Our Faith in Global Justice". Freedom House. 6 September 2012.
  12. "Reducing Genocide to Law – Academic and Professional Books – Cambridge University Press". Cambridge.org.
  13. "Payam Akhavan | Faculty of Law – McGill University". Mcgill.ca.
  14. "Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide 2007 Echenberg Family Conference on Human Rights". Efchr.mcgill.ca. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013.
  15. "Project MUSE – Report on the Work of the Office of the Special Adviser of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide". Muse.jhu.edu. doi:10.1353/hrq.2006.0040.
  16. "Vancouver Human Rights Lecture" (PDF). Thelaurier.ca. September 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 October 2016. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  17. "Beyond Human Rights broadcast on CBC". Cbc.ca. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  18. "CBC Massey Lectures – Massey College". www.masseycollege.ca. Archived from the original on 15 May 2018. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  19. "The bestselling books in Canada: Oct. 8-14,2017 | CBC Books". CBC. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  20. Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission. Pca-cpa.org. Archived 12 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  21. Simons, Marlise (9 September 2008). "International Court Hears Georgian Case". The New York Times.
  22. Petrou, Michael. (23 May 2012) Tripoli vs. The Hague: two courts vie to try Gadhafi's son – World. Macleans.ca.
  23. Libyan Tug of War : Law | Focus online. Publications.mcgill.ca.
  24. "Japan claims fatal flaw in Australian whaling attack". The Age. Melbourne.
  25. Rights lawyer appointed for former Bangladesh PM | Reuters. In.reuters.com.
  26. "Forgotten Yazidis: The case for investigating genocide". Toronto Star. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  27. "Foley Hoag Leads the Gambia's Legal Team in Historic Case to Stop Myanmar's Genocide Against the Rohingya | Foley Hoag". foleyhoag.com. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
  28. Levin, Arielle. (9 January 2005) Thinking of Home And of Human Rights – NYTimes.com. New York Times.
  29. McTighe, Kristen (21 November 2012). "Years of Torture in Iran Comes to Light". The New York Times.
  30. Iran, 1988: Judgment time. The Economist (30 October 2012).
  31. Veronique Mistiaen: Iran Tribunal to Uncover Iran's "Srebrenica". Huffingtonpost.co.uk.
  32. Petrou, Michael. (14 January 2013) Tribunal finds Iran guilty of torture and murder of political prisoners – World. Macleans.ca.
  33. THE GREEN WAVE trailer.mov. YouTube (5 July 2012).
  34. Petrou, Michael. (15 February 2012) Iran's "heroic struggle to reclaim its lost humanity" – The World Desk. Macleans.ca.
  35. Ebadi, Shirin; Akhavan, Payam (29 November 2013). "Should the United States fund the service program AmeriCorps? President Obama would increase its budget. Rep. Paul Ryan would eliminate federal funding for the program". The Washington Post.
  36. Leave every stone unturned. The Globe and Mail.
  37. Iran's calculus of terror includes Syrian response. The Globe and Mail.
  38. Iranian Press Targets Nobel Prize Winner Ebadi. Iran Press Watch (3 December 2008).
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