Paul van Zyl

Last updated

Paul van Zyl grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era and served as the Executive Secretary of South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995 to 1998. [1]

Contents

He received a BA and LL.B. degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1996 and an LL.M. in International Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1997. Paul also earned an LL.M. in Corporate Law from the NYU School of Law. Paul was selected as a Hauser Global Scholar at NYU, a program which selects 10 of the finest students from countries across the world, chosen on the basis of their intellectual and leadership ability, as well as their capacity to participate productively in a global community of scholars and practitioners. [2]

In 2001, Paul co-founded the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an international human rights organisation based in New York City. The ICTJ works for justice in over 40 countries that have endured massive human rights abuses under repression and in conflict. They work with victims, civil society groups, national and international organisations to ensure redress for victims and to help prevent atrocities from happening again. [1]

Paul received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2009 with Juan E. Mendez, the former ICTJ President, for their contributions to transitional justice, and was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008. Paul has served on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, and has been an adviser to the Sundance Documentary Film Program. For 15 years he served as the Director of New York University School of Law's Transitional Justice Program and for 5 years, he was a visiting professor of law at the National University of Singapore. Further, Paul was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Santa Clara University School of Law in 2012. Paul has also served as an adviser and consultant to many NGOs and Governments on transitional justice issues in countries including: Colombia, Indonesia, East Timor, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. [3]

Paul is the co-founder and as of 2015 CEO of Maiyet, a luxury fashion brand that celebrates and cultivates traditional design and culture by partnering with global artisans to incorporate exquisitely handcrafted details into the collections. [4] Maiyet has recently evolved into The Maiyet Collective. The Collective brings together the largest collection of sustainable luxury and positive impact brands in the world right now. Featuring over 50+ new and emerging brands on a rotational basis, The Collective provides a retail showcase for small to medium-sized sustainable brands, as part of a community of like-minded partners who share a similar philosophy and mission.

Paul co-founded The Conduit in 2016 (opened summer 2018), a club to gather change makers, which now has branches in London and Oslo. [5]

Paul was named by London Tech Week as one of its 30 "Change Makers 2018", celebrating the companies and people harnessing technology to inspire social and economic impact and drive global innovation.[ citation needed ]

Lectures

Introduction to Transitional Justice in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law

Articles

Forbes, "How The Maiyet Collective Concept Store Will Reshape The Lexicon Of Ethical Luxe"

The Financial Times, "The Conduit: a London members' club with a social purpose"

The Evening Standard, "Can a members’ club change the world? That’s what The Conduit wants to do..."

Vogue, "How New Members' Club The Conduit Plans To Change The World"

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Sexton</span> American lawyer and academic

John Edward Sexton is an American legal scholar. He is the Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law at New York University where he teaches at the law school and NYU's undergraduate colleges. Sexton served as the fifteenth president of NYU, from 2002 to 2015. During his time as president, NYU's stature rose dramatically into the ranks of the world's top universities, and it became the world's first global network university. Sexton has been called a "transformational" figure in higher education and was named by Time Magazine as one of the United States' 10 best college presidents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York University School of Law</span> Law school in Manhattan, New York City, New York, US

The New York University School of Law is the law school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1835, it was the first law school established in New York City and is the oldest surviving law school in New York State and one of the oldest law schools in the United States. Located in Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, NYU Law grants J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KWV South Africa</span>

KWV South Africa (Proprietary) Limited is one of the leading wine and spirits producers in South Africa. Its brands include Roodeberg, KWV Wines & KWV Brandies, and Laborie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Truth commission</span> Commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing

A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. Truth commissions are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship marked by human rights abuses. In both their truth-seeking and reconciling functions, truth commissions have political implications: they "constantly make choices when they define such basic objectives as truth, reconciliation, justice, memory, reparation, and recognition, and decide how these objectives should be met and whose needs should be served".

TransAfrica is an advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the United States concerning African and Caribbean countries and all African diaspora groups. They are a research, education, and advocacy center for activism focusing on social, economic and political conditions in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America and other parts of the African Diaspora. They are the largest and oldest social justice organization in the United States that focuses on the African world. They have served as a major research, educational, and organizing institution for the African and African Descendant communities and the U.S. public in general.

Transitional justice is a process which responds to human rights violations through judicial redress, political reforms and cultural healing efforts in a region or country, and other measures in order to prevent the recurrence of human rights abuse. Transitional justice consists of judicial and non-judicial measures implemented in order to redress legacies of human rights abuses. Such mechanisms "include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms" as well as memorials, apologies, and various art forms. Transitional justice is instituted at a point of political transition classically from war to positive peace, or more broadly from violence and repression to societal stability and it is informed by a society's desire to rebuild social trust, reestablish what is right from what is wrong, repair a fractured justice system, and build a democratic system of governance. Given different contexts and implementation the ability to achieve these outcomes varies. The core value of transitional justice is the very notion of justice—which does not necessarily mean criminal justice. This notion and the political transformation, such as regime change or transition from conflict are thus linked to a more peaceful, certain, and democratic future.

The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) was founded in 2001 as a non-profit organization dedicated to pursuing accountability for mass atrocity and human rights abuse through transitional justice mechanisms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Alston</span> Australian law scholar

Philip Geoffrey Alston is an Australian international law scholar and human rights practitioner. He is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, and co-chair of the law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. In human rights law, Alston has held a range of senior UN appointments for over two decades, including United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, a position he held from August 2004 to July 2010, and UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights from 2014-2020.

An amnesty law is any legislative, constitutional or executive arrangement that retroactively exempts a select group of people, usually military leaders and government leaders, from criminal liability for the crimes that they committed. More specifically, in the 'age of accountability', amnesty laws have come to be considered as granting impunity for the violation of human rights, including institutional measures that preclude the prosecution for such crimes and reprieve those crimes already convicted, avoiding any form of accountability.

César Rodríguez-Garavito is an international human rights and environmental law scholar and practitioner. He is a Professor of Clinical Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law. Rodríguez-Garavito is the founding director of the Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic, the Climate Litigation Accelerator, and the Future of Human Rights Practicum at NYU Law. He is also the editor-in-chief of Open Global Rights, a leading online opinion portal in the human rights field.

Patrick Bond is Distinguished Professor at the University of Johannesburg Department of Sociology, where he directs the Centre for Social Change. From 2020-21 he was professor at the University of the Western Cape School of Government and from 2015–19, distinguished professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand Wits School of Governance. Before that, from 2004, he was senior professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he directed the Centre for Civil Society. His research interests include political economy, environment, social policy, and geopolitics.

David Tolbert currently serves as the third president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, a global human rights organization with headquarters in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abdul Tejan-Cole</span>

Abdul Tejan-Cole is a Sierra Leonean Oku legal practitioner and former Commissioner of Sierra Leone's Anti-Corruption Commission. He was awarded the 2001 Human Rights Watch award.

Reparations are broadly understood as compensation given for an abuse or injury. The colloquial meaning of reparations has changed substantively over the last century. In the early 1900s, reparations were interstate exchanges that were punitive mechanisms determined by treaty and paid by the surrendering side of a conflict, such as the World War I reparations paid by Germany and its allies. Reparations are now understood as not only war damages but also compensation and other measures provided to victims of severe human rights violations by the parties responsible. The right of the victim of an injury to receive reparations and the duty of the part responsible to provide them has been secured by the United Nations.

Alexander Lionel Boraine was a South African politician, minister, and anti-apartheid activist.

Robin Vincent, CMG, CBE was an international expert in the administration of justice, and a major contributor to the creation and effective functioning of international criminal tribunals.

Pablo de Greiff is a Colombian academic and human rights activist, who served as the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. In January 2015 he was also asked to be part of UNIIB, a United Nations mission of Independent Experts to address the situation in Burundi. From 2019 to 2020 he was part of a group of experts advising the UN Human Rights Council on its preventive functions. In April 2022 he was appointed as one of the three commissioners in the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine established by the UN. Since 2014 he is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice of the School of Law at New York University, where he directs both the Transitional Justice Program and the Prevention Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global apartheid</span>

Global apartheid is a term used to describe how Global North countries are engaged in a project of "racialization, segregation, political intervention, mobility controls, capitalist plunder, and labor exploitation" affecting people from the Global South. Proponents of the concept argue that a close examination of the global system reveals it to be a kind of apartheid writ large with striking resemblance to the system of racial segregation in South Africa from 1948 to 1994, but based on borders and national sovereignty.

The Accountability and Justice Act of 2008 is a legislative act passed by the Iraqi Council of Representatives in January 2008.

James J. Busuttil FRSA FRAS FRGS FIoD is an attorney, law academic and company director. He worked at the United States Department of State in counterterrorism and then in private financial law in New York City, before moving to Europe where he was an academic, NGO leader and Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Later, he became a director and then Chairman of a public company based in Silicon Valley.

References

  1. 1 2 "Peace Ventures", Paul van Zyl
  2. "Alumnus of the Month". NYU Law. March 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2018.
  3. "CHRGJ", NYU Law
  4. "Philosophy | Maiyet". Archived from the original on 25 October 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  5. https://www.theconduit.com