Biographies of the members of the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi

Doudou Diène (Senegal) was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance from 2002 to 2008 and the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Côte d’Ivoire from 2011 to 2014. He is also a former member of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict. He is a former Director of the Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue Division of UNESCO. He is currently a Member of the Board of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Mr. Diène holds a doctorate in public law from the University of Paris and a diploma in political science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.

Francoise Hampson (United Kingdom) is Professor of International Law of Armed Conflicts and Human Rights at Essex University.  She served as an independent expert member of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights from 1998-2007. She has litigated numerous cases before the European Court of Human Rights particularly concerning Turkey.  She has taught, researched and published widely in the fields of the law of armed conflict, international humanitarian law and on the European Convention on Human Rights.  For her work representing Turkish Kurds she was awarded the title of Human Rights Lawyer of the year in 1998.  She is currently working on autonomous weapons, investigations into alleged violations in situations of armed conflict and on the use of an individual petition system to address what are widespread or systematic human rights violations.

Lucy Asuagbor (Cameroon) has served in the judiciary of her country for nearly 30 years at different courts and levels. She is currently judge at the Supreme Court of Cameroun. Ms. Asuagbor has also served at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights since 2004, currently as Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, as Chairperson of the Working Group on communications, and previously as Chairperson of the Working Group on the Rights of Persons living with HIV/Aids, as Special Rapporteur on the rights of human rights defenders in Africa and as member of the Committee against torture. Ms. Asuagbor holds a B.A. in Law from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, an LLM of International Maritime Law from the University IMLI of Malta, and a Diploma from the Ecole de la magistrature of Cameroon.

Mr. Fatsah Ouguergouz (Algeria), former President, was a judge and vice-president of the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights from 2006 to 2016. He was also the Independent Expert on the human rights situation in Burundi from 2010 to 2011. He is a member of the International Commission of Jurists and a visiting professor at various universities.

Reine Alapini Gansou (Benin) is lawyer to the Bar of Benin since 1986 and has been Law Teacher at the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) since 2000. Currently she is the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights (since 2012) of the African Union.  She has also been a member of the Commission of Human and People’s Rights since 2005 and a member of the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration since July 2011. She was the laureate of the Prize of Human Rights for the fiftieth year of African Countries independence in 2010.  She also served as a member of the Human Rights Council-mandated International Commission of Inquiry on post-electoral violence in Cote d’Ivoire (May-June 2011). She holds two High Level University degrees, in Common Law at University of Lyon in 2007 (DU), and in Environmental Law and Politic at University of Lomé, Maastricht and Bhutan in 1999. She is author and co-author of research papers in human rights and in Law.