Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf
President of the International Court of Justice · 1948
Who is Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf?
Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf was born on 12 September 1948 in Eyl, a port town in the Nugal province of what is now the Puntland region of Somalia. He earned a law degree from the Somali National University, pursued post-graduate studies in international law at the University of Florence, and completed a doctorate in international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. Fluent in Somali, Arabic, English, French, and Italian, he built a career spanning academia, international organizations, and the judiciary, including work with the Food and Agriculture Organization and UNESCO before serving as a judge on the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. He was elected to the International Court of Justice in 2009 and re-elected in 2018, serving as the Court's President from 2018 to 2021, becoming only the third African, after Nigeria's Taslim Olawale Elias and Algeria's Mohamed Bedjaoui, to hold the position. As President, he delivered the Court's landmark 25 February 2019 advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, finding the United Kingdom's continued administration of the Chagos Archipelago, including the British Indian Ocean Territory, unlawful and calling for the completion of Mauritius's decolonization. He is the founder and General Editor of the African Yearbook of International Law.
Sources: Abdulqawi Yusuf, Wikipedia (biographical summary) · International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 (Advisory Opinion), 25 February 2019