Advisory Council

South African jurist Dr. Navi Pillay served as the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations from 2008 to 2014. Aside from that, she has championed many human rights issues with which she herself had direct experience, having grown up as a member of the non-white majority under the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

After studying law in Natal, she worked on behalf of the victims of racial segregation as a criminal defense lawyer and as an activist for the anti-Apartheid movement.Later, Dr. Pillay earned a master’s degree under a graduate program at Harvard Law School. In 1988, she became the first South African to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science at Harvard Law School.

In 1995, after the end of Apartheid, Dr. Pillay was appointed to the Supreme Court of South Africa as a limited-term judge. In the same year, she was appointed as a judge to the International Court for Rwanda, where she served for a total of eight years, including four years as President. Later she served on the International Criminal Court in Den Haag for five years.

Dr. Pillay plays an active role in numerous human rights organizations. Among other roles, she is the co-founder of "Equality Now", an international women’s rights organization.

Serge Brammertz of Belgium is the Chief Prosecutor of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. Dr. Brammertz serves as the  Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a role he has held since 2008. He has overseen the arrest and prosecution of key political and military leaders, including Radovan Karadžic and Ratko Mladic.

From January 2006 to the end of 2007 he served as the Commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission into the murder of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Previously, he was Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in charge of the Investigations Division of the Office of the Prosecutor when the investigations of crimes committed in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur were initiated.

Before his election as Deputy Prosecutor, he was the head of the Federal Prosecution of the Kingdom of Belgium where he supervised numerous investigations and trials related to cases of organised crime, terrorism and violations of international humanitarian law.

Mr. Brammertz was a professor of law at the University of Liège and an author on organised crime and international cooperation in criminal matters. His works were published extensively in international academic journals. He holds a law degree from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, a degree in Criminology from the University of Liège and a PhD in international law from the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg, Germany.

Christoph Safferling (Dr. jur., LL.M.) is Professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Law Procedure, International Criminal Law and Public International Law at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He is Director of the Research Unit International Criminal Law at the University. Moreover he is the Whitney R. Harris International Law Fellow of the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown N.Y.

Since 2012, he is member of the Independent Academic Commission at the Federal Ministry of Justice for the Critical Study of the National Socialist Past. He has been the speaker of the Founding Commission of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy from 2010-2012.

His main fields of research are: contemporary legal history, international criminal law and the subjective elements of the crime. He has published several articles and books in the field of criminal law, international law and human rights law, inter alia "International Criminal Procedure" in 2012 and "The Nuremberg Trials: International Criminal Law since 1945" in 2006. Safferling is co-editor of the German Law Journal and the Revista Internationale di Diritto Penale. He studied Law in Munich and London and received his doctoral degree at the University of Munich in 1999.

Thomas Buergenthal served as judge on the International Court of Justice from 2000 to 2010. He is the Lobingier Professor Emeritus of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.

He was Judge and President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as a member of the U.N. Truth Commission for El Salvador and the U.N. Human Rights Committee.

Buergenthal is one of the youngest survivors of the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. He was liberated from Sachsenhausen one month prior to his 11th birthday. Professor Buergenthal came to the United States at the age of 17.

He received his J.D. degree from New York University Law School and his LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from the Harvard Law School. He is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books. His memoir, "A Lucky Child" has become a worldwide bestseller.

Brenda J. Hollis was appointed Prosecutor of the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone in January 2014, and Reserve International Co-Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in April 2015. She also serves as an Expert Legal Consultant on international criminal law and procedure, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy.

She served as Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) from February 2010 to December 2013. From 2007 to 2010, she was the Principal Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), responsible for leading the legal team prosecuting former Liberian President Charles Taylor, which position she held until the appeal in that case was concluded.

From 2001 to 2007, Ms. Hollis was an Expert Legal Consultant on international criminal law and procedure. During this period she trained judges, prosecutors and investigators at courts and international tribunals in Indonesia, Iraq and Cambodia. She also assisted victims of international crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Colombia to prepare submissions requesting investigations by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

In 2002 and 2003, and again in 2006, Ms. Hollis served as a legal consultant to the Prosecutor of the SCSL, taking part in the first investigative missions, drafting several of the first indictments and, in 2006, drafting the amended indictment against Mr. Taylor and preparing that case for trial.

Ms. Hollis held various legal positions in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 1994 to 2001, including serving as lead counsel in a number of historic prosecutions. She led the reopening of the case in which rape was charged as torture, and was lead counsel in the preparation of the case against former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic until her departure from the ICTY in 2001.

Ms. Hollis is a former US Peace Corps volunteer, and retired from the US Air Force with the rank of Colonel.

Karl Huber served as President of both the Munich Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) and the Bavarian Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgericht) from 2005 to 2015.

As President of the Constitutional Court, he collaborated on thousands of rulings on constitutional complaints for violations of fundamental rights. In May 2014, the Constitutional Court under his Presidency ruled that the Bavarian State Government is required to provide information to the opposition party in the state parliament on how much state budget money various cabinet members had paid to their family members in connection with illegitimate employment. This closely watched ruling belongs to a number of other rulings that strengthened the role of the parliament.

From 1995 to 2001, he served as Vice President of the Munich Higher Regional Court, and from 2001 to 2005 he served as Solicitor General in Munich. From 1981 to 1995, Dr. Huber held various positions in the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice, and also served as a judge and public prosecutor.

Prof. Cecilia Medina Quiroga is one of the most prominent Latin American influences in the Human Rights field. Ms. Medina Quiroga was elected in 2004 to become the vice-president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and then in 2009 she was elected to be the first woman to hold the presidential office of the court.

She was also the Director of the Human Rights center, Professor of International Law, and Member of the Academic Board of Doctor’s Program at University of Chile. While chairing in 2000 at the UNHCR, she passed comment 28 on Article 3 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which calls for the equal empowerment of women.

After earning her Doctor in Law from University of Utrecht she published extensively in the Human Rights field. The following years she was awarded with numerous distinctions, including the Women’s Prize given by the Gruber Foundation and the Chilean Women’s Leadership Award.

Dr. Athaliah Molokomme obtained her Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in 1981, and a Masters in Law from Yale Law School, USA in 1983. She obtained a PhD in Law at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in 1991. She has taught law at the University of Botswana for more than 15 years, and researched and published extensively in the fields of family law, women and law, customary law and employment law.

Dr. Molokomme has served on several boards, commissions and professional organizations at national, regional and international levels, and is a founding member of several human rights organizations.

From July 1998, she was founding head of the Gender Unit at the Secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), until May 2003 when she was appointed judge of the High Court of Botswana.

In October 2005, she was appointed to the position of Attorney General of the Republic of Botswana, whose main constitutional task is Principal Legal Advisor to the Government of Botswana.
In this role, she also represented the Government in various national, regional and international bodies.

Dr. Molokomme qualified as an international arbitrator in 2016, and is now a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in London.  

Since May 2017, H.E. Ms. Molokomme has been the Permanent Representative of Botswana to the United Nations office in Geneva, and Ambassador to Switzerland.

Betty Kaari Murungi is a lawyer with nearly thirty years broad experience in the practice of law at the national, regional and international levels; ten years experience in the management and governance of non-governmental and non-profit organisations.

Murungi was educated at the University of Nairobi and the Kenya School of Law. In 2005, she spent a year as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program researching local transitional justice mechanisms.

Murungi has been an integral player in emerging jurisprudence of international criminal law and international humanitarian law as pertains to gender crimes ; experience in transitional justice processes, women’s human rights, constitutionalism, governance and social justice philanthropy; She co-founded the Urgent Action Fund- Africa.

She served as Vice Chairperson and Commissioner to the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission and as the Africa representative on the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court (2009-2013).

Among other awards, Murungi was honoured by the President of Kenya with the national award of Moran of the Burning Spear (MBS) for her distinguished service to the country in the field of Human Rights. She is also a recipient of the International Peace Advocate Award by Cardozo Law School New York.

Since 2007, Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schmahl has been Professor of German and Foreign Law, International Law and European Law at the University of Würzburg, where she also holds a seat on the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Model United Nations.

In 2011, Prof. Dr. Schmahl served as attorney of record for the German Federal Government in a trial before the European Court of Human Rights, and from 2011 to 2013 she was a member of the “Unabhängige Kommission zu Fragen des Abgeordnetenrechts beim Deutschen Bundestag” (“Independent Commission on Questions Related to the Law of German Federal Parliament Members”). Since 2012, she has also served an alternate member on the Board of Directors of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. 

Dr. Schmahl has published works on numerous topics of German and European public law and international law. Most recently, she published a legal commentary on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, entitled “Kinderrechtskonvention mit Zusatzprotokollen” (“Convention on the Rights of the Child, with Supplementary Protocols”) (2013).She studied law at the Universities of Mainz, Geneva and Heidelberg.

Stefanie Schmahl was awarded a PhD by the University of Mainz in 1996 and a degree of habilitation by the University of Potsdam in 2004. Before taking up her post at the University of Würzburg, Professor Schmahl held professorships at the Universities of Tübingen, Regensburg, Bremen, und Düsseldorf. In the 2015 summer semester she was a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University.

In 2014, Prof. Dr. Bertram Schmitt was nominated by the German Federal Government for election as judge of the International Criminal Court. The Assembly of States Parties elected him to the court on December 10, 2014. He was elected from the Proposal List A for candidates with proven expertise in the field of criminal law.

After earning a law degree and PhD in 1985, Prof. Schmitt began as a research associate at the University of Frankfurt/Main. He entered the Higher Judicial Service of the German State of Hesse in 1991. He was appointed Presiding Judge of the Darmstadt Regional Court (Landgericht) in 1999. In April 2000, the Bavarian State Minister for Science, Research and Art appointed him to the post of Honorary Professor at the University of Würzburg, where he teaches criminal law, criminal law procedure, and criminology.

Prof. Schmitt was appointed Judge of the German Federal Supreme Court on May 8, 2005. There he served initially in the XI Civil Division, which is responsible for cases involving banks and stock exchanges; he was appointed to the II Criminal Division in January 2008. In addition, Bertram Schmitt has served as an ad-hoc judge with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

Judge Sang-Hyun Song (Republic of Korea) was the President of the International Criminal Court as from March 2009 through March 2015. For more than thirty years, Judge Song (1941) taught as a professor of law at Seoul National University Law School, beginning in 1972. He has also held visiting professorships at a number of law schools, including Harvard, New York University, Melbourne and Wellington.

Judge Song started his legal career as a judge-advocate in the Korean army and later as a foreign attorney in a New York law firm. He has served as a member of the advisory committee to the Korean Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice. Judge Song has vast experience in relevant areas of international law, principally international humanitarian law and human rights law.

He is co-founder of the Legal Aid Centre for Women, and of the Childhood Leukemia Foundation in Seoul, and the President of UNICEF/KOREA. Judge Song is also the respected author of several publications on relevant legal issues, and the recipient of the highest decoration of the Korean Government (MUNGUNGHWA, 2011).

David Tolbert was the President of the International Center for transitional Justice (ICTJ) from 2010 to 2018. Previously he served as Registrar (Assistant Secretary-Gerneral) at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and prior to that was Assistant Secretary-General and Special Expert on United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials.

From 2004 to 2008, Mr. Tolbert served as Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yogoslavia (ICTY). He had previously been the Deputy Registrar of the ICTY and at an earlier time served at the ICTY as Chef de Cabinet to President Gabrielle Kirk McDonald and Senior Legal Advisor Registry, serving a total of nine years at the ICTY. From 2000 to 2003 Mr. Tolbert held the position of Executive Director of the American Bar Association’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative, which operates rule-of-law development programs throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He also held the position of Chief of the General Legal Division of the United Nations Relief Works Agency in Vienna Austria, and Gaza.

Mr. Tolbert frequently lectures and makes public appearances on international justice issues. He also represented the ICTY in the discussion leading up to the creation of the ICC and the Rome Conference and served as an expert to the ICC Preparatory Committee Inter-Sessional meetings.