William Schabas

William Anthony Schabas, OC (born 19 November 1950 ) is a Canadian academic specialising in international criminal and human rights law.

He is professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty.

He has written over 18 monographs and 200 articles.

Schabas moved with his family to Toronto in 1952 and received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from the University of Toronto, and LL.B., LL.M. and LL.D. degrees from the Université de Montréal.

He has also been awarded honorary doctorates by Dalhousie University, Halifax, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland and Northwestern University, Chicago.

According to UN Watch, when Schabas was a PhD student in history at the University of Toronto in 1974, and a leader in the SDS group, he was the subject of a university investigation for allegedly violating human rights and freedoms by physically obstructing a visiting Harvard professor from speaking on campus.

Schabas was suspended from the university for four years, later reduced to two.

Schabas was called to the Quebec bar in 1985 and practised law in Montreal for many years.

He has also practised at the international level, appearing before the International Court of Justice, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.

Schabas was invited by the Special Court for Sierra Leone to serve as an amicus curiae.

Schabas has participated on several human rights fact-finding missions on behalf of international non-governmental organisations, such as Amnesty International and the International Federation of Human Rights, to such countries as Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, South Africa and Russia.

From 1991 to 2000 he was a professor of human rights law and criminal law at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), and he chaired the Department of Legal Studies from 1994 to 1998.

He has taught as a visiting or adjunct professor at several other institutions, including McGill University, Queen's University Belfast, LUISS University in Rome, Cardoza Law School, Panthéon-Assas University and the National University of Rwanda.

The 1993 mission to Rwanda, of which he was a member, alerted the international community to the danger of genocide in that country.

Schabas moved to Ireland in 2000, serving as the director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, until 2011.

That year he moved to London to take up a chair in international law at Middlesex University, London.

He is the recipient of the Vespasian V. Pellat Medal for International Criminal Justice of the Association international de droit penal and the gold medal in the Social Sciences of the Royal Irish Academy.

In 2009 he was elected President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, as well as holding a position on the board of directors of the International Institute for Criminal Investigation and René Cassin, a non-government organisation that presents a Jewish voice on human rights.

Schabas has authored more than 350 academic journal articles.

He has also delivered lectures or conference papers in more than fifty countries.

His writings have been cited in judgments, decisions and opinions of: International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Special Court for Sierra Leone, European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Supreme Court of Canada, United States Supreme Court, Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, High Court of Tanzania and Supreme Court of Israel.

Schabas also sits on the advisory board of the Israel Law Review, the Journal of International Criminal Justice and is editor-in-chief of Criminal Law Forum, the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law.

He is a member of the board of trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights.

In 2011, Schabas attended a conference in Iran with the Tehran-based Non-Aligned Movement Center for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity where he was a keynote speaker.

It was reported that the center has close ties with former Iranian president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He attended the conference together with US film producer Sandra Schulberg in order to present a documentary film about the Nuremberg Trial to Iranians, which was welcomed by the audience, and spoke to them about the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities.

Schabas served as one of seven commissioners on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and as one of six commissioners on the Iran Tribunal Truth Commission from 18 to 22 June 2012.

In 2014, Schabas was appointed the head of a UN Committee investigating the role of Israel in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.

The appointment was criticized by Canada's Foreign Minister, John Baird, and the Geneva-based advocacy NGO UN Watch, on the basis of allegations that Schabas was anti-Israel, a charge he denied.

In February 2015 he resigned after an Israeli complaint that he provided legal advice to the Palestine Liberation Organization in 2012.

Schabas had been hired as a consultant to provide a legal analysis regarding the Palestinian bid for non-member observer status at the United Nations.

Schabas stated that he was resigning to stop the controversy from overshadowing the work of the Gaza inquiry, whose results were due in March.

Avigdor Lieberman hailed his resignation as an 'achievement for Israeli diplomacy'.

In late 2019, Schabas defended the nation of Myanmar at the International Court of Justice in The Hague against charges of genocide towards its Rohingya population, brought by the republic of Gambia.

Schabas was born in Cleveland, Ohio to an Ashkenazi Jewish family His family name, which is a variation of the Yiddish word for "Sabbath" ("Shabbos" in Yiddish, derived from "Shabbat" in Hebrew), which has been interpreted as perhaps suggesting also a Sephardic connection.

His mother, Ann (née Fairley), was born in Canada and served as dean of the Faculty of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Toronto.

His father, Ezra Schabas, is an American-born Canadian musician and author.

His maternal grandparents were Barker Fairley, an English-born painter and scholar, and Margaret Fairley, a writer and educator also born in England.

His paternal grandparents came from Galicia, and relatives on his father's side were murdered in the Holocaust.