Yash Pal Ghai

Yash Pal Ghai "served as chairman of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission from 2000 to 2004, when he returned to the University of Hong Kong, where he was appointed Sir Y.K. Pao Professor of Public Law in 1989.

"Previously he was a professor of public law at the University of Warwick (1978-1989, 1992-1997) and a research fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden (1973-1978). He has served as director of research at the International Legal Center in New York (1972-1973), and as a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale Law School (1971-1973).

"Prof. Ghai has been a visiting fellow and visiting professor at universities throughout the world. He has taught, researched and published on constitutional law, law and development, ethnicity, human rights, and sociology of law; and has been a legal and constitutional adviser to various UN bodies, the East African Community, and states including Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tanzania, Cambodia, Kenya, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, most recently the University of Hong Kong's Distinguished Research Achievement Award (2001). In July 2005, he was made a fellow of the British Academy. In November 2005 the Secretary General of the UN appointed him as his special representative for human rights in Cambodia.

"Prof. Ghai has published extensively on constitutional law, as well as on law in many developing countries, especially in Africa and the Pacific. His books include The Political Economy of Law: A Third World Reader (with Luckhan and Snyder), Hong Kong's New Constitutional Order: The Resumption of Chinese Sovereignty and Basic Law, and Autonomy and Ethnicity: Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States.

"Prof. Ghai earned BA (1961), MA (1990) and DCL (1992) degrees from Oxford University. He was called to the English bar from Middle Temple in 1962, and received an LLM from Harvard University in 1963.

"In addition, he has served as a member of the advisory boards of numerous commissions and organizations. Prof. Ghai is currently a member of the Interights advisory council, the advisory board of the Asian Commission of Human Rights, and has served on the board of the Minority Rights Group."


 * Director, International Center for Transitional Justice
 * Advisory Council, Interights