Biography

Dr Jeremy Sarkin has undergraduate and postgraduate law degrees from the University of Natal (Durban), an LLM from Harvard Law School and a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of the Western Cape. He is an attorney in South Africa and in the State of New York. He practiced at the New York bar during 1988 and 1989 and worked for the same law firm in Washington DC. He then spent time working at the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, Switzerland.

He was Senior Professor of Law at the University of the Western Cape from 1990 to 2008 and has been a visiting Professor at Washington and Lee University Law School; the University of Maryland Law School, the University of Cincinnati Law School, the University of Oregon Law School, the University Aix-Marseille in France; and the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

He served as the National Chairperson of the NGO Human Rights Committee of South Africa from 1994 to 1998 and was the Director of the organization's advocacy project. He was nominated in 1996 for appointment to the South African Truth Commission in 1995. He has worked on constitutional, transitional issues (including truth commissions) in various countries, including Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Namibia, Sudan, and Burma. He served as an acting judge in 2002 and 2003 in the Cape High Court in South Africa.

He has published 12 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters in the areas of human rights and transitional justice. His recent books are "Human Rights, The Citizen and the State: South African and Irish Perspectives" (2002) "Carrots and Sticks: The TRC and the South African Amnesty Process" (2004); "The Administration of Justice: Comparative Perspectives (2004) Reconciliation in Divided Societies" (2007), "Human Rights in African Prisons" (2008) and (forthcoming) "Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: The Socio-Legal Context of Claims under International Law by the Herero against Germany for Genocide in Namibia, 1904-1908" (2008)

He serves on the editorial board of a number of journals including Human Rights Quarterly, Law, Democracy, and Development, Human Rights and International Legal Discourse; International Review of Criminal Law and is a series editor on transitional justice for Intersentia Press.

In March 2008 he was elected by the Human Rights Council to be a member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances.

 Curriculum Vitae