Summary: Payam Akhavan is Professor of International Law at McGill University. He was the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at The Hague, served the UN in Cambodia, Guatemala, and East Timor, and appeared in leading cases before international courts. He is the author of numerous publications and his 2001 article “Beyond Impunity” in the American Journal of International Law has been recognized as one of “the most significant published journal essays in contemporary legal studies.” Professor Akhavan has been a prominent advocate of human rights for Iranian political prisoners, is Co-Founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, and has been at the forefront of efforts to bring Iranian leaders to justice for crimes against humanity. In 2005, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. His latest book, Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning, and the Ultimate Crime(Cambridge, 2012) addresses the question of whether genocide is in fact the ‘ultimate crime’.
