Kenya’s Professor of International law, Phoebe Okowa, has been elected at the UN International Law Commission, becoming the first African woman to be elected in the commission.

“I am pleased beyond words and both honoured and humbled to n equal measure to have been elected today to the United Nations International Law Commission for the term 2023-2027. This is by any standards an outstanding mandate, thank you to everyone involved,” Phoebe said in a Tweet.

The government nominated Phoebe Okowa for the role in May this year.

Okowa was elected with 162 votes and will serve in the commission for a period of five years.

“Professor Okowa is an acclaimed legal scholar, with a distinguished career in Public International Law, Prof Okowa would make a great contribution to the work of the ILC,” GOK said during her nomination.

Hongera prof Phoebe Okowa

 She has served as an advocate of the High Court of Kenya.

In 2017 Prof Okowa was nominated as an arbiter to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.

Education

She graduated with First Class Honours Bachelor of Law (LLB)  at the University of Nairobi. She later moved to the University of Oxford where she graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL)

She also seats on the International Advisory Board of the Stockholm Centre for International Law and the Executive Committee of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S).

Dr Okowa has served as a member of the IUCN Committee on Environmental Law and the ILA Committee on Transnational Enforcement of Environmental Law.

She previously taught at the University of Bristol and has held visiting appointments at the Universities of Stockholm, Helsinki and Lille.

In 2011, she was a Hauser Global Visiting Professor at New York University, School of Law.

She is also the joint editor of Foundations of Public International Law (Oxford University Press- with Professor Malcolm Evans) and the Queen Mary Studies in International Law (Brill with Professor Malgosia Fitzmaurice).