The Africa Group for Justice and Accountability

Aïchatou Mindaoudou is the former United Nations Special Representative in Côte d’Ivoire, former Acting Joint UN/AU Special Representative in Sudan Darfur, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Niger.

Dapo Akande is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford where he is also the Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) and of the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations. He is Yamani Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford. Dapo Akande is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford where he is also the Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) and of the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations. He is Yamani Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford. He has held visiting professorships at Yale Law School, the University of Miami School of Law and the Catolica Global Law School, Lisbon. He was the 2015 Sir Ninian Stephen Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne Law School’s Asia- Pacific Centre for Military Law.

Prof. Akande has published papers on varied areas of international law in a number of scholarly journals, including the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, British Yearbook of International Law, International & Comparative Law Quarterly and Journal of International Criminal Justice. His article, “The Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over Nationals of Non-Parties: Legal Basis and Limits”, was awarded the 2003 Journal of International Criminal Justice Prize, and his 2016 co-authored piece, “The International Legal Framework Regulating the Use of Armed Drones”, in the International Comparative Law Quarterly was selected for the ICLQ Annual Lecture 2017.

Dapo Akande is a member of the Editorial Boards of the European Journal of International Law and the American Journal of International Law, and previously sat on the Board of the African Journal of International and Comparative Law. He is founding editor of EJIL:Talk! the widely read scholarly blog of the European Journal of International Law.

He has acted as consultant, expert and adviser on international law issues to states, non-governmental organisations, international courts and tribunals, United Nations bodies, the African Union Commission, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). He is currently a legal adviser to the UK Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones inquiry into the ways in which the UK works with partners on the use of drones.

Navanethem  “Navi”  Pillay holds a B.A. LL.B. from Natal University South Africa, as well as a Master of Law and Doctorate of Juridical Science from Harvard University.

In 1967, she became the first woman to start a law practice in her home province of Natal, where she acted as a defence attorney for anti-apartheid activists, exposing torture and helping establish key rights for prisoners on Robben Island. She also worked as a lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In 1995, after the end of apartheid, Ms. Pillay was appointed as acting judge of the South African High Court, and in the same year was elected by the UN General Assembly to sit as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), where she served a total of eight years, the last four (1999-2003) as President. She played a critical role in the ICTR’s groundbreaking jurisprudence on rape as genocide, as well as on issues of freedom of speech and hate propaganda.

In 2003, Navi Pillay was appointed as a judge of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where she served in the Appeals Chamber until August 2008. Her appointment as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights followed in 2008, a post she was to hold until 31 August 2014. In April 2015, Ms. Pillay became the 16^th Commissioner of the International Commission against the Death Penalty. She was also named chair of the Special Reference Group on Migration and Community Integration in KwaZulu-Natal, a group formed to investigate the immediate and underlying causes of attacks on migrants.

In South Africa, as a member of the Women‘s National Coalition, she contributed to the inclusion of the equality clause in the country’s Constitution that prohibits discrimination on grounds of race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. She co-founded Equality Now, an international women‘s rights organisation, and has been involved with other organisations working on issues relating to children, detainees, victims of torture and domestic violence, and a range of economic, social and cultural rights.

Her current posts include Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice in the Application under the Genocide Convention by The Gambia against Myanmar, President of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, President of the Advisory Council of the Nuremberg Principles Academy and Trustee of the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Foundation Board of Trustees.

Catherine Samba-Panza was elected president of the Central African Republic in January 2014 by members of the National Transitional Council, the interim parliament, making her the first woman to hold the post. She was president until March 2016, when she handed over power to her successor, Faustin-Archange Touadéra.

Between June 2013 and January 2014, she was appointed the mayor of Bangui by the interim government after she was accepted by both the Seleka rebels and their opponents during the 2012- 2013 conflict due to her reputation for neutrality and incorruptibility.

A successful businesswoman and corporate lawyer, she has also been active in reconciliation efforts and civil society organisations, promoting women’s rights.

Dr. Fatou Bensouda of The Gambia served as Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for nine years, from 2012 to 2021, having been elected to the post by consensus of the Assembly of States Parties on 12 December 2011 and sworn in on 15 June 2012.

Between 1987 and 2000, Mrs. Bensouda successively held the posts of Senior State Counsel, Principal State Counsel, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of the Republic, and Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, in which capacity she served as Chief Legal Advisor to the President and Cabinet of The Republic of The Gambia. She has also served as a General Manager of a leading commercial bank in The Gambia.

Her international career as a non-government civil servant formally began at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she worked as a legal adviser and trial attorney before rising to the position of Senior Legal Advisor and Head of the Legal Advisory Unit in the years from 2002 to 2004, after which she joined the ICC as the Court’s first Deputy Prosecutor.

Mrs. Bensouda has served as delegate to United Nations conferences on crime prevention, the Organization of African Unity’s Ministerial Meetings on Human Rights, and as delegate of The Gambia to the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the ICC.

Mrs. Bensouda has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the distinguished ICJ International Jurists Award (2009) presented by the then President of India P. D. Patil, and the 2011 World Peace Through Law Award presented by the Whitney Harris World Law Institute, Washington University, which recognised her work in advancing the rule of law and thereby contributing to world peace. In October 2021, at the end of her mandate, she was awarded The Outstanding Achievement Award by The International Law Association American Branch.

She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Middlesex University and Vrije Universiteit, Brussels respectively, and holds a Master of Laws from the International Maritime Law Institute in Malta, making her The Gambia’s first expert in international maritime law and the law of the sea.

Mrs. Bensouda has been listed: by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world (2012); by the New African magazine as one of the “Most Influential Africans;” by Foreign Policy as one of the “Leading Global Thinkers” (2013); and by Jeune Afrique as one of 20 African women who, by their actions and initiatives in their respective roles, advance the African continent (2014).

Hassan Bubacar Jallow was sworn in as the Chief Justice of The Gambia on 15 February 2017, after being appointed by newly elected President of The Gambia, Adama Barrow. He is also the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) (2003-2015), the former Prosecutor of the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations (2012-2016).

He studied law in Tanzania, Nigeria and Great Britain and previously worked as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in The Gambia (1984-1994) and as Justice of the Gambian Supreme Court (1998-2002), Judge of the Appeals Chamber, UN Special Court for Sierra Leone (2002), Judge Ad Litem of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (2001), and Judge of the Commonwealth Arbitral Tribunal. He has served as a legal consultant to the UN, the Organisation of African Unity, the African Union and the Commonwealth on various matters, including governance, human rights, public law, international law and international criminal justice. He has published various books and papers on his subject of expertise and is the author of “Journey for Justice” (2012). He was made Commander of the National Order of the Republic of The Gambia (CRG) in 1985.

Justice Jallow is a member of the Gambian and the Nigerian Bar Associations, as well as being a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (MCIARB) and the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP). He is Co-Chair of the World Justice Project, a member of the Advisory Council for a Convention on Crimes against Humanity, and a member of the Commonwealth Judges and Magistrates Association.

Richard J. Goldstone graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA. LLB. cum laude in 1962. After practising as an Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar, he was appointed Senior Counsel in 1976, made Judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court in 1980, and appointed Judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in 1989. From 1991 to 1994, he served as Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, which came to be known as the Goldstone Commission. From July 1994 to October 2003, he was a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, where he played a major role in the transition from apartheid South Africa to democracy. 

From August 1994 to September 1996, he served as the Chief Prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has served as an expert in several commissions, high-level groups and task forces, including the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo, the International Task Force on Terrorism, the Investigation into the Iraq Oil for Food Programme and the UN Fact Finding Mission on possible war crimes and international human rights violations committed in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. On 6 December 2019, he was appointed by the ICC Assembly of States Parties to the Independent Expert Review of the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute System. As Chair of the Review, he led a team of eight other experts mandated to make recommendations on reforms to the Court.

Goldstone received the 1994 International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association, the 2005 Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, and the 2009 MacArthur Award for International Justice, announced by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He is the author of “For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator” (2001), and the co-author of “International Judicial Institutions: the Architecture of International Justice at Home and Abroad” (2008).

Member of the Africa Group for Justice and Accountability, Kaari Betty Murungi is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya with over 30 years’ experience in the practice of law at a national, regional and international level. Educated at the University of Nairobi and Kenya School of Law, she spent a year as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Programme, researching transitional justice mechanisms. She is currently Professor of Practice in the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and works as an independent consultant.

Ms. Murungi has broad experience in transitional justice processes, women’s human rights, gender, constitutionalism and governance. Over the past two decades, the focus of her interest and work has been to advance gender justice in international justice and accountability mechanisms, and to promote women’s human rights in the context of violent conflict. Ms. Murungi has worked on these issues in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Northern Uganda, South Sudan and Kenya. She has been an integral player in the jurisprudence of international criminal law and international humanitarian law insofar as it pertains to gender.

Ms. Murungi served: as Vice Chairperson and Commissioner to the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission (2009-2010); as the Africa representative on the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court (2009-2013); as  Senior Transitional Justice Advisor to the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), South Sudan (2016-2018); and, as a member of the Independent Commission of Inquiry for the Occupied Palestinian Territory appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (July 2018- March 2019). She is a member of the Africa Group for Justice and Accountability, an independent group of senior African experts on international criminal law and human rights, including political figures, members of international and domestic tribunals, and human rights advocates that came together in November 2015 to strengthen justice and accountability in Africa.

Abdul Tejan-Cole was Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA). Prior to his appointment, Mr. Tejan-Cole served as Commissioner of the Anti-Corruption Commission in Sierra Leone, from December 2007 to April 2010.

His previous positions include: Attorney at the Special Court for Sierra Leone; Deputy Director for the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Cape Town Ofce; and President of the Sierra Leone Bar Association.

Mr. Tejan-Cole also has extensive experience working with the Open Society Institute (OSI). He served as Board Chair of OSIWA from 2002-2007, and has also served as a member of the Board of the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI).