Indian Lawyer Aniruddha Rajput Elected To UN’s International Law Commission
- In a significant victory, a young Indian lawyer won a hotly-contested election in the UN General Assembly for membership to the world body’s top body of legal experts, garnering the highest number of votes in the Asia-Pacific group.
- Aniruddha Rajput, 33, is among the 34 individuals elected by the General Assembly as members of the International Law Commission, the UN organ tasked with the progressive development of international law and its codification.
- Amongst the youngest to be elected to the nearly 70-year old body, Mr Rajput is India’s first time candidate to the Commission, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin told news agency PTI.
- The five-year term of the newly elected members will commence from January 2017. The members to the Geneva-based body have been elected from five geographical groupings of African, Asia-Pacific, Eastern European, Latin American and Caribbean and Western European states.
- Aniruddha Rajput practiced in the Supreme Court for six years and was also a visiting professor for international Commercial Arbitration and International Trade Law at the Indian Law Institute for two years.
- An alumnus of London School of Economics, Rajput was appointed by the Law Commission of India to an expert group tasked with analysis of Model Bilateral Investment Treaty 2015 of India, according to his profile submitted to the UN.
- He has written several books, chapters, articles, conference papers on diverse legal subjects and his areas of expertise in international laws include Sources of International Law, International Arbitration, Law of the Sea, Use of Force, UN Law & Practice and International Trade Law (WTO Law).
- Japan’s Shinya Murase got the second highest number of votes in the Asia-Pacific group at 148, followed by Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud of Jordan and Huikang Huang of China with 146 votes each, Korea’s Ki Gab Park with 136 votes, Ali bin Fetais Al-Marri of Qatar with 128 votes and Hong Thao Nguyen of Viet Nam with 120 votes.
- The international law commission was established by the UN General Assembly in 1947 to undertake the mandate of UN to ensure promotion and progressive development of International law and its codification.
