International Criminal Court (ICC) Justice Chile Eboe-Osuji to address the role of international law after the war in Ukraine

The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law’s annual David. B. Goodman lecture, established by family, friends and colleagues in memory of the late Queen's Counsel, will be delivered this year by the former president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Honourable Chile Eboe-Osuji.

Members of the public and broader U of T community are invited to register for the lecture’s March 17 livestream.

Eboe-Osuji says he will explore how the invasion of Ukraine should mark a new watershed in the development of applied international law.

“Although the invasion of Ukraine is a violation of clear norms of international law to the extent of those norms, it also puts in sharp relief certain other serious gaps that are in need of filling,” says Justice Eboe-Osuji.

In 2012, the Nigerian-born Eboe-Osuji joined the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands and in 2018 he began a three-year term as the Court's 4th president, concurrently serving as a senior judge in the ICC’s Appeals Division. He has worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Following his retirement from the ICC, Justice Eboe-Osuji was appointed Distinguished International Jurist at Ryerson University’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at U of T Law, Stanford University Law School, the Paul Martin professor at the University of Windsor and senior fellow of Car Center at Harvard Kennedy School of Government

“I have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed long experience in applied international law, beyond the theory of it. I’m keen to share the benefits of that experience with the younger generation, including certain insights on areas that can be improved,” says Justice Eboe-Osuji.

He is the author of International Law and Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts and editor-in-chief of the Nigerian Yearbook of International Law. His commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, The Globe and Mail and Fox News.