Professor Yuval Shany has just been selected as the first Israeli to lead the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee. Shany, an expert in international law who has studied at New York University, the University of London and Hebrew University, is currently the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in public international law at Hebrew University.
The vice president of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions and Center for Security and Democracy, Shany been a member of the Human Rights Committee since 2013.
The UN body is a group of independent experts that supervises implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The committee, which typically hosts three meetings in Geneva per year, is distinct from the United Nations Human Rights Council. The latter has been the subject of controversy for its past criticism of Israel; the United States withdrew from the body last month.
