Members of the Panel

 

Marek A. Nowicki (January 2007-present) is a Polish citizen and a human rights lawyer, since 1987 member of the Warsaw Bar Chamber. Since July 2013, he is a member of the Selection Panel of Vaclav Havel Human Rights Price of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.  

 

Mr Nowicki was the United Nations-appointed international Ombudsperson in Kosovo from July 2000 to December 2005. He was a member of the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France from March 1993 until 31 October 1999 and he was the Polish member of the European Union Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights from March 2003 to September 2006. In 2005 he was nominated by the Committee of Ministers as one of three candidates for the post of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe. 

 

He was one of the “eminent lawyers” appointed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to assess the legal and human rights situation in Moldova (1994) and Azerbaijan (1997). In 1996 and 1998, the Council of Europe asked him to serve as a human rights expert during the evaluation of the compatibility of the legal systems of Georgia and the Russian Federation with the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights. He served as a human rights expert for the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) and the Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs of the Council of Europe.

 

He was a founding member of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Warsaw and its president from November 2003 until February 2008. In June 2012,  he was elected the president of the Council of the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights in London (INTERIGHTS). Mr Nowicki is the author of dozens of books and hundreds of articles on human rights published in Poland and abroad. He also lectures on human rights at the “Collegium Civitas” university in Warsaw. 

 

 

Christine Chinkin, Fellow of the British Academy, is currently Professor in International Law at the London School of Economics and a William C Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She is a member of the Bar of England and Wales and an academic member of Matrix Chambers. She has degrees in law from the Universities of London, Yale and Sydney and has previously held full-time academic posts at the Universities of Oxford, London, New York Law School, the National University of Singapore, the University of Sydney and Southampton. Professor Chinkin's main interests are in public international law, especially the law of treaties, human rights, with emphasis on the international protection of women's rights, and international organisations, and domestic and international dispute resolution.

 

She is the author of many articles on issues of public international law and women's human rights, of Halsbury's Laws of Australia, Title on Foreign Relations (2nd edition 2001), Third Parties in International Law (1993), co-author of Dispute Resolution in Australia (2nd edition 2002), co-author of The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis (2000) and co-author of The Making of International Law (2007). She is Director of Studies of the International Law Association. In April 2001 she was awarded the American Society of International Law's Certificate of Merit for 'outstanding contribution to scholarship' and in 2006 the Society's Goler T. Butcher Medal 'for outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights law' (with H. Charlesworth). Professor Chinkin has been a consultant on international law to the Asian Development Bank; on trafficking in women to the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights; on Peace Agreements and Gender to the UN Division for the Advancement of Women and UNIFEM. 

 

She is currently a Scientific Expert, to an Ad Hoc Committee of the Council of Europe on the drafting of a Convention on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. She was a Member of the Fact-Finding Mission to Beit Hanoun pursuant to United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution S 3/1, May 2008 and of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict in 2009.

 

 

Françoise Tulkens (September 2012 - present) has a Doctorate in Law, a Master’s degree in Criminology and a Higher education teaching certificate (agrégation de l’enseignement supérieur) in Law. She was a Professor at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and has taught, in Belgium as well as abroad – as a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Geneva, Montreal, Ottawa, Paris I, Rennes, Strasbourg and Louisiana State University – in the fields of general criminal law, comparative and European criminal law, juvenile justice and human rights protection systems. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Geneva, Limoges and Ottawa. She has authored many publications in the areas of human rights and criminal law and also reference books: Introduction au droit pénal. Aspects juridiques et criminologiques (with M. van de Kerchove, Brussels, Kluwer, 9th ed., 2010, 863 p.) and Droit de la jeunesse. Aide, assistance et protection (with Th. Moreau, Brussels, Larcier, 2000, 1143 p.).

 

From November 1998 to September 2012, she was a Judge in the European Court of Human Rights, serving as Section President from January 2007 and as Vice-President of the Court from February 2011. She has been an Associate Member of the Belgian Royal Academy since 2011. She is currently Chair of the Board of Governors of the King Baudouin Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Lemmens (January 2007 - September 2012) is a Belgian citizen.

 

He was a judge in the Council of State of Belgium from 1994 until September 2012. He has served both in the Council of State’s section that examines the compatibility of draft legislation and draft regulations with higher norms of international and national law and in the Council of State’s contentious section, which constitutes the Supreme Administrative Court of Belgium.

 

Since 1986, Mr Lemmens has also been a professor at the University of Leuven where he lectures in international human rights law. He has also taught constitutional law, civil procedure and administrative procedure. He is the author of a number of books and articles on European human rights law. He was the director for Belgium of the European Master’s Degree Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation, a European inter-university programme based in Venice, Italy.

 

Mr Lemmens took up a mandate of judge in the European Court of Human Rights in September 2012.

 

Michèle Picard  

 

Michèle Picard (January 2007-March 2008), a French citizen, was appointed as a judge in 1982. She later became the Vice-President of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris. In March 1996 she was appointed by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe as a member of the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. She was the President of the Chamber from November 1997 until December 2003.

 

Ms Picard was an alternate member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights until 2006 and was appointed by the President of the UN Commission of Human Rights for two years in July 2005 as an independent expert on the situation of human rights in Uzbekistan. She also worked in the human rights sector with the Council of Europe in Albania, in FYROM and in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 

Ms Picard was elected by the UN General Assembly as a judge ad litem in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on 24 August 2005, a function which she assumed on 3 March 2008. 

 

Snezhana Botusharova 

 

Snezhana Botusharova (May 2008-June 2009) is a Bulgarian citizen and was concurrently an international judge in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the Panel. From November 1998 until April 2008 she was a Judge in the European Court of Human Rights.

 

Ms Botusharova obtained her Doctor of Law degree from the Lomonosov University of Moscow. She worked as an attorney-at-law at the Sofia Bar before becoming a professor of constitutional law at the Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, the New Bulgarian University in Sofia and the Neofit Rilski University in Blagoevgrad.

 

Ms Botusharova was a member of the Bulgarian Grand National Assembly on behalf of the Union of Democratic Forces and she was one of the authors of the new Bulgarian Constitution. She was re-elected to the 36th National Assembly and was its Deputy Chairperson and acting Chairperson from September to November 1992. As a Member of Parliament she took part in various legislative activities preparing the legal basis for Bulgaria’s transition to democracy and rule of law.

 

She was also a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe from 1991 to 1994 and, in this capacity, prepared legal opinions on the draft Constitutions of Ukraine, the Russian Federation and Moldova. From 1994 to 1998 Ms Botusharova served as the Republic of Bulgaria’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America. Ms Botusharova is the author of books and articles on constitutional law, in particular the new Bulgarian Constitution and on human rights issues.

 

Ms Botusharova took up an appointment as an international judge in the Constitutional Court of Kosovo in June 2009.