Payam AKHAVAN

Professor Payam Akhavan is an experienced independent lawyer with broad international expertise. Over three and a half decades, he has acted in every major international forum, including the International Court of Justice, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, International Criminal Court and tribunals constituted under the Permanent Court of Arbitration, as well as the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Supreme Courts of the United States and Canada.

He has stood as counsel or advocate in more than 30 sovereign disputes, representing numerous states, including as counsel to the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law in advisory opinion proceedings before the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Other notable cases in which he has been instructed include Aerial Incident of 8 January 2020 (Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and United Kingdom v Islamic Republic of Iran); Application of the Genocide Convention Case (The Gambia v Myanmar); Appeal Relating to the Jurisdiction of the ICAO Council under Article 84 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates v Qatar); Maritime Boundary Dispute in the Indian Ocean (Somalia v Kenya); and Obligation to Negotiate Access to the Pacific Ocean (Bolivia v Chile).

A respected academic, Payam is Senior Fellow and inaugural Chair in Human Rights at Massey College, University of Toronto. He was previously a Full Professor at McGill University Faculty of Law (Montreal), and Distinguished Visitor at University of Toronto Faculty of Law, with other appointments at Sciences Po and Université Paris Nanterre, Oxford University, European University Institute in Florence and Yale Law School. He has published extensively on human rights and international criminal law, and is on the editorial review board of Human Rights Quarterly.

Payam is an Associate Member of the Institut de droit international (IDI), former member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and former Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. He was the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and has served with the United Nations in investigations relating to conflict zones and allegations of genocide around the world.

In 2021, Payam was appointed to the Order of Ontario, the province’s highest civilian honour, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.