Surya Subedi

Professor Surya P. Subedi, OBE, QC, is an academic and a barrister specialising in the fields of Public International Law, International Investment Law, WTO Law and International Human Rights Law. He is Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds and was from 2009 to 2015 the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia. He also served as a member of a high-level Advisory Group on Human Rights to the British Foreign Secretary between 2010 and 2015. He is a founder of the Asian Society of International Law and Chairman of the Board of Editors of its flagship journal - the Asian Journal of International Law - published by Cambridge University Press. He also is the editor of a new series in 'International Law and Human Rights' published by Routledge. He was elected to the Institut de Droit International at its Session in Rhodes in 2011 and made a Membre Titulaire in 2015.

Professor Surya Subedi started his education at Tribhuvan University, LLB 1980 and MA 1984. He then moved to the University of Hull (LLM with Distinction 1988) and finally to the University of Oxford (DPhil in Law 1993). Prof Subedi began his academic career as a Lecturer in Law in 1993 at the University of Hull. After rapid successive promotions he became a Professor of Law in 1999. After a stint at Middlesex University, he moved to the University of Leeds in 2004 to become Professor of International Law, a post he still holds to date.

Overview

Prof Subedi practised law as an advocate prior to joining the government of Nepal during which he was Under-Secretary in the International Law & Treaties Division in the Ministry of Law & Justice and later as a legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a practising Barrister in England at Three Stone Chambers, Lincoln's Inn, London. Prior to qualifying for the English Bar, he was a consultant on international legal matters to Mishcon de Reya Solicitors in London. He has advised a number of countries on international legal matters and was appointed in 2004 by the World Trade Organization to the Roster of Panellists of its Dispute Settlement System. His name has also been designated to serve on the panel of arbitrators of an intergovernmental organization - the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) with its headquarters at the World Bank in Washington DC.

United Nations Special Rapporteur

The United Nations Human Rights Council voted unanimously for Prof Subedi to be the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia at the 10th Session of the Council in 2009. As one of only 12 country-specific UN special rapporteurs in the world, Prof Subedi identified human rights problems in the country and gave constructive recommendations to help tackle them. Responding to the news of his appointment, Professor Subedi said: “The main task would be to cast an impartial expert eye on the overall human rights situation in Cambodia and offer constructive advice to the Government to address the problems that exist with regard to the overall situation in the country.” During his six years of service for the UN, he produced four substantive and substantial reports on judicial, parliamentary, electoral and land reform in Cambodia and contributed to a peaceful political transition in the country. Many of his recommendations, especially those relating to judicial and electoral reform have been implemented by the Government of Cambodia.

Honours

Professor Subedi was appointed an honorary Queen's Counsel ( QC) in January 2017 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to the development of international law and to the advancement of human rights. Prior to this, he was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2004 for his services to international law and to Britain-Nepal relations. Speaking at the OBE investiture on 19 October 2004 in London, Mr. Jack Straw, the then British Foreign Secretary, stated that Professor Subedi had “made a highly distinguished contribution to our understanding of international law, and to its evolution” and his work in international law had "spanned almost every aspect of it - with a special focus on issues ... which make a real difference to people's lives." He also was decorated by His late Majesty King Birendra of Nepal with a high-level state honour, the Order of Suprabal Gorkha Daxinbahu, for his services to international law and to the nation in 1998. Professor Subedi has a string of other honours to his credit and has been awarded prestigious academic prizes for his work, including the Dasturzada Pavry Memorial Prize by the University of Oxford for an outstanding DPhil thesis in 1993, an SPTL Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship by the British Society of Legal Scholars for one of his books in 1997 and the Josephine Onoh Memorial Prize as best LLM student of the year by the University of Hull in 1988. He also has won two scholarships- first was a British Council Scholarship to Hull for his LLM studies in 1986 and second was an FCO Scholarship for his doctoral studies at Oxford in 1989.

Other Activities

He was appointed by HM the Queen of the UK as a Crown representative on the Governing Board of SOAS, University of London, in 2007 and he completed his five-year term of office in 2012. He also was a Governor of Beverley High School in East Yorkshire between 1999 and 2001. He currently is Co-chair of a major medical charity - Britain-Nepal Medical Trust - which is the oldest British charity working in Nepal for the past 50 years. He also is the Chairman of a London-based think-tank, the Global Policy Forum for Nepal and Founding Chairman of the Britain-Nepal Academic Council (established at SOAS, University of London, in May 2000).

He has published eight books in various areas in international law and a good number of scholarly articles in all major international law journals. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Yearbook of International Law (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers) for six years between 1999 and 2006 and is currently Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Asian Journal of International Law (Cambridge University Press).

Selected Works

i. Books

• The Effectiveness of the UN Human Rights System: Reform and the Judicialisation of Human Rights (Routledge Publishing, London/New York, 2017).
• International Investment Law: Reconciling Policy and Principle (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 1st edition 2008, 2nd edition 2012, 3rd edition 2016. This book was translated into Chinese by Professor Zhang Lei and published in China in 2015.
• Dynamics of Foreign Policy and Law: A Study of Indo-Nepal Relations (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• International Watercourses Law for the 21st Century: The Case of the River Ganges Basin (Ashgate Publishing, UK, 2005).
• Contemporary Issues in International Law: A Collection of the Josephine Onoh Memorial Lectures (edited with Professors David Freestone and Scott Davidson), Kluwer Law International, The Hague/London (2002).
• Land and Maritime Zones of Peace in International Law (1996), Oxford Monographs in International Series, Clarendon: Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Land-Locked Nepal in International Law (1989), K. Gautam, Kathmandu, Nepal.
• Nepalese Administrative Law (Ratna Book Publishers, Kathmandu, First edition 1985, Second edition 1987 and Third edition 1989).

ii. Articles

• ‘The UN Human Rights Special Rapporteurs and the Impact of their Work: Some Reflections of the UN Special Rapporteur for Cambodia’, 6 (1) Asian Journal of International Law (Cambridge University Press, January 2016), pp. 1–14.
• ‘The Universality of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Agenda: The Impact of the Shift of Power to the East and the Resurgence of the BRICS’, 55 (2) Indian Journal of International Law (Springer, 2015), pp. 177–207
• ‘India’s New Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Treaty with Nepal: A New Trend in State Practice’ 28 (2) ICSID Review: Foreign Investment Law Journal (Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 384–404.
• ‘Protecting Human Rights through the Mechanism of UN Special Rapporteurs’, 33 Human Rights Quarterly (The Johns Hopkins University Press, U.S.A.), 2011, pp. 201–228.
• ‘The Notion of Free Trade and the First Ten Years of the World Trade Organization: How Level is the “Level Playing Field”?’ Vol. 53 (2) The Netherlands International Law Review (Autumn 2006), pp.273-296.
• ‘The Challenge of Reconciling the Competing Principles within the Law of Foreign Investment with Special Reference to the Recent Trend in the Interpretation of the Term “Expropriation” International Lawyer (A journal of the American Bar Association’s International Law Section); Spring 2006; Vol. 40 (1), pp. 121–141.
• ‘The Legal Regime Concerning the Utilization of the Water Resources of the River Ganges Basin’, 46 German Yearbook of International Law (2004), pp. 452–493.
• ‘The Road from Doha: The Issues for the Development Round of the WTO and the Future of International Trade’, 52 (2) International and Comparative Law Quarterly (April 2003), pp. 425–446.
• ‘Hydro-diplomacy in South Asia: The Conclusion of the Ganges and the Mahakali River Treaties’, 93 (4) American Journal of International Law (October, 1999), pp. 631–640.
• ‘The Legal Competence of the International Community to Create ‘Safe Havens’ in ‘Zones of Turmoil’, Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 12 (1), March 1999 (Oxford University Press), pp. 23–35.
• ‘Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence: The Response of International Law’ in the European Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 2, Issue 6, 1997, pp. 587–606.
• ‘The Doctrine of Objective Regimes in International Law and the Competence of the UN Security Council to Impose Territorial or Peace Settlements on States', German Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 37 (1994), pp.162-205.
• ‘Neutrality in a Changing World: European Neutral States and the European Community', International and Comparative Law Quarterly (London), Vol. 42 (2), March 1993, pp.238-268.
• ‘The Marine Fishery Rights of Land-locked States with Particular Reference to the EEZ', International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law (London), Vol. 2, No. 4 (1987), pp.227-239.

iii. Reports

• ‘The situation of human rights in Cambodia’, Sixth Report (2014) (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/27/70); Fifth Report (2013) (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/24/36); Fourth Report (2012) (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/21/63); Third Report (2011) (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/18/46); Second Report (2010) (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/15/46); First Report (2009) (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/12/40); and an additional report entitled ‘A Human Rights Analysis of Economic and other Land Concessions in Cambodia’ (2012) UN Doc. A/HRC/21/63/Add.1.

All of these reports were submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in his capacity as the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights for Cambodia and were published by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, as UN documents.