Professor Stefaan Smis

Stefaan Smis is part-time reader in international law at the University of Westminster. He is also a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) where he lectures on international law, international human rights law and international dispute settlement. He also teaches international criminal law and the law of internal armed conflicts at the Belgian Royal Higher Institute for Defence.

He has participated in various research projects financed by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Belgian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the European Parliament and the Flemish Inter-University Council for Development Cooperation. He is currently leading an inter-university development cooperation project between the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Catholic University of Bukavu (DR Congo) that has created a human rights and humanitarian law center in Bukavu to train local judges, lawyers, parliamentarians, civil servants, and civil society activists in human rights and international humanitarian law with the aim to contribute in fighting human rights abuses in Eastern Congo.

Dr Stefaan Smis is member of the comité scientifique et rédactionel of Revue de droit africain, editor-in-chief of the international peer reviewed journal Human Rights & International Legal Discourse, corresponding editor for Belgium for the International Legal Materials (American Society of International Law), secretary of the Belgian Branch of the International Law Association (ILA) and former member of the ILA International Committee on Rights of Indigenous Peoples and listed as one of the five Belgian ad hoc judges at the European Court of Human Rights.

As an activist Stefaan Smis is member of Amnesty International Flanders, is founding member and member of the board of VORMEN (Flemish Organisation for Human Rights Education), member of the board of IPIS (International Peace Information Service) and member of the board and currently vice-president of Recherches et Documentation Juridiques Africaines (R.D.J.A. Asbl).

Dr. Smis is interested in international law, international dispute settlement, human rights law, humanitarian law, the prosecution of grave breaches of human rights, states in transition and regional and economic integration in Africa. He supervises PhDs in these and related fields.

Doctoral researchers supervised - completed 10

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.