Judge Fatsah Ouguergouz, an Algerian national, is an independent international arbitrator in commercial and investment arbitration.
He previously chaired the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Burundi (2016-2018) established by the United Nations Human Rights Council (Geneva, Switzerland) and was one of the first eleven judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Arusha, Tanzania), elected by the Assembly of Heads of States of the African Union; he served the Court from 2006 to 2016 and served as Vice-President from 2012 to 2013.
He was Secretary of the International Court of Justice (The Hague, Netherlands) where he practiced for twelve years before his election to the African Court. He previously served as a Human Rights Officer in Rwanda for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1994), and worked as Legal Officer at the Office of Legal Affairs of the United Nations in New York (1992-1994). Judge Ouguergouz is a founding member and former Executive Director of the African Foundation for International Law (The Hague); he was Deputy Director of the African Yearbook of International Law from 1992 to 2018.
Judge Ouguergouz holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva) and taught public international law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva (1989-1992). He was an Orville H. Schell Fellow at Yale Law School (New Haven, Connecticut, USA) and Visiting Professor at the University of Buenos Aires Law School (Argentina), the Georgetown University Law Center (Washington D.C., USA), the University Pantheon-Assas (Paris II, France) and the Geneva Academy for International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. In 2018, he was Senior Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva) and taught a special course at the summer course of The Hague Academy of International Law.
Judge Ouguergouz is notably member of the International Commission of Jurists (Geneva), the African Association of International Law (Banjul, The Gambia), the International Commercial Expert Committee of the China International Commercial Court of the Supreme People’s Court of China (Beijing), the Consultative Committee of Beihai Asia International Arbitration Centre (Singapore), the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (The Hague) and the African Association of Arbitration (Kigali, Rwanda).
Judge Ouguergouz is the author of numerous publications, including several books, notably L’Union africaine: cadre juridique et institutionnel – Manuel sur l’Organisation panafricaine (Co-editor with Judge Abdulqawi Yusuf, Editions Pedone, Paris, 2013, 471 pp.
