12 August 2008
New High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem (Navi) Pillay, of South Africa, will succeed Louise Arbour as High Commissioner for Human Rights on 1 September 2008.
As a member of a non-white minority in apartheid South Africa, and as a front-line, grassroots lawyer who acted as a defense attorney for many anti-apartheid campaigners and trades unionists, Ms. Pillay has direct personal experience of many of the issues that a High Commissioner for Human Rights covers under her mandate. Since 2003, Ms. Pillay has served as Judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, Netherlands. Prior to that, she served – as both Judge and President – on the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which she joined in 1995. |
