Justice Fatsah Ouguergouz is one of the inaugural members of the Court, as he was first elected on the bench of the Court in 2006 for a four-year term and then re-elected in 2010 for a six-year term. He served as Vice-President of the Court in 2012-2013.
An Algerian national, Justice Ouguergouz is graduated in Law from the University of Saint-Etienne (France) and hold a Ph. D. in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva, Switzerland).
He was Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Burundi, appointed by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (2010-2011). Until November 2006, he was Secretary of the International Court of Justice (The Hague) where he worked for 12 years. Before joining the World Court, he was a Legal Officer at the Office of Legal Affairs of the United Nations (New York) and then a Human Rights Officer in Rwanda for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Judge Ouguergouz taught Public International Law at the Law School of the University of Geneva for four years. He is a former Orville H. Schell Fellow at Yale Law School (New Haven, Connecticut, USA), Visiting Professor at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, the University Panthéon-Assas (Paris II, France) as well as Father Robert F. Drinan Professor of Human Rights at Georgetown University Law Center (Washington D.C.). He is regularly invited as guest lecturer by numerous universities, international organizations, or other institutions like the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg, France) or the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR, Geneva).
Justice Ouguergouz is a commissionner of the International Commission of Jurists (Geneva), member of the Honorary Committee of the Keba Mbaye Foundation – Ethics and Solidarity (Dakar), of the Governing Board of the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg), of the Advisory Council of the Strathmore Institute for Advanced Studies in International Criminal Justice (Nairobi), founding member of the African Institute of International Law (Arusha) and founding member and former Executive Director of the African Foundation for International Law (The Hague). He is Associate Editor of the African Yearbook of International Law, member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of the African Human Rights Law Journal (Centre for Human Rights, Université of Pretoria), of the International Law in Domestic Courts Online (Amsterdam/Oxford), of the Droits fondamentaux-On Line Review (Paris) and of the Jinan Human Rights Journal (Tripoli, Lebanon).
He is the author or editor of numerous publications in the field of international law, including three books: The African Union: Legal and Institutional Framework – A Manual on the Pan-African Organization (Co-Editor with Judge Abdulqawi Yusuf), Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2012, 576 pages), The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights – A Comprehensive Agenda for Human Dignity and Sustainable Democracy in Africa (Nijhoff Publishers, 2003, 1016 pages) and La Charte Africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples – Une approche juridique des droits de l’homme entre tradition et modernité (Presses Universitaires de France, 1993, 479 pages).
