Payam Akhavan is Associate Professor at McGill University. He teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, international criminal law and transitional justice, with a particular interest in human rights and multiculturalism, war crimes prosecutions, UN reform and the prevention of genocide. He was previously the Boulton Senior Fellow at McGill, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Visiting Lecturer and Senior Fellow at Yale Law School and the Yale University Centre for International and Area Studies. He has published extensively including "Beyond Impunity: Can International Criminal Justice Prevent Future Atrocities?" (2001) 95 American Journal of International Law 7 (www.asil.org/ajil/recon2.pdf) selected by the International Library of Law and Legal Theory as one of "the most significant published journal essays in contemporary legal studies". He is also the author of the Report on the Work of the Office of the Special Advisor of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide (2005).
Professor Akhavan was one of the first Legal Advisors to the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and played a key role in the development of its foundational jurisprudence. He also has considerable experience in post-conflict peace-building and international dispute settlement, having advised the UN on transitional justice, appearing as counsel before international courts and tribunals on behalf of sovereigns, and serving on the board of directors of human rights NGOs, including the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre (www.iranhrdc.org), in New Haven, of which he is also the president and co-founder. His work has been featured in the New York Times and, in recognition of his contributions to promoting accountability for human rights violations, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader (www.younggloballeaders.org) in 2005.
