Eduardo Valencia Ospina

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Eduardo Valencia Ospina
Born (1939-09-19) 19 September 1939 (age 84)
NationalityColombian
Occupation(s)Lawyer and former international civil servant.
Known forSecond-longest serving registrar in the history of the ICJ, Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations, senior advisor to the Colombian President, counsel and lawyer for different parties before the ICJ, Senior Legal Officer for the UN, Chairman of the International Law Commission, etc.

Eduardo Valencia Ospina (born 19 September, 1939) is a Colombian lawyer and former international civil servant. [1] Valencia Ospina holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School (1963), where he specialized in international law and was also a Special Graduate Studies student from 1963 to 1964. [2] He also holds a PhD in Juridical Sciences and a PhD in Economic Sciences from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. [3]

Biography

Born into a wealthy Cali family, Valencia Ospina worked at the United Nations for 36 years before retiring in the year 2000 with the rank of Assistant-Secretary-General. [4] [5] He was Senior Legal Officer at the Office of Legal Affairs, and, most notably, was the Registrar (secretary-general) of the International Court of Justice from 1987 to 2000. He was the second-longest serving registrar of the ICJ. [6] [7] [8] [9] In November 2016, Valencia Ospina was elected to serve for a third term as a member of the International Law Commission. [10] At the ILC, Valencia Ospina served as First Vice-Chair during its 69th session in 2017 [11] and as Chair during its 70th session in 2018. [12] In 2007, he was appointed Special Rapporteur for the report on the "Protection of persons in the event of disasters". [13] The Commission adopted the resulting "Draft articles on the protection of persons in the event of disasters" in 2016. [14] The draft articles were subsequently submitted to the United Nations General Assembly and put on its agenda. [15]

Valencia Ospina is a former president of the Latin American Society of International Law. [16] [17] He also served on the board of several international law journals, including the Journal of International Dispute Settlement. Most notably, he was the Editor In Chief of The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals. [18] Ospina is also an international arbitrator and counsel in cases before the ICJ. Most notably, he is a counsel for Colombia in the maritime border dispute case with Nicaragua, which began in 2001. [19] In October 2022, Ospina was designated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia as the lead counsel.

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References

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  5. "LE GREFFIER DE LA COUR, M. EDUARDO VALENCIA-OSPINA, FAIT PART DE SA DECISION DE QUITTER SES FONCTIONS LE 5 FEVRIER 2000 | Couverture des réunions & communiqués de presse". www.un.org (in French). Retrieved 11 November 2018.
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  16. Almeida, Paula Wojcikiewicz; Sorel, Jean-Marc (25 November 2016). Latin America and the International Court of Justice: Contributions to International Law. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9781317511366.
  17. "Angel V. Horna on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 11 November 2018.
  18. Valencia-Ospina, Eduardo (21 June 2017). "Note by the Editor-in-Chief". The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals. 16 (1): 1–2. doi:10.1163/15718034-12341338. ISSN   1571-8034.
  19. "Nicaragua y Colombia a audiencias ante la CIJ | Sciences Po Observatoire Politique de l'Amérique latine et des Caraïbes / Observatorio Politico de América Latina y del Caribe (OPALC)". www.sciencespo.fr (in French). 10 October 2015. Retrieved 11 November 2018.