Mads Andenas elected Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

18/11/13

Mads Andenas, a door tenant at Brick Court Chambers since 1997, has been elected Chair of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of which he has been a member since 2009, and appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary Detention, both for a term of three years.

The Working Group is one of the oldest and most respected human rights bodies in the UN, and rule on individual complaints, undertake country missions and adopt advisory opinions to the UN Human Rights Council. On the Council’s request, the Working Group is currently drafting “Principles and Guidance on the the right of anyone deprived of his or her liberty by arrest or detention to bring proceedings before court, in order that the court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his or her detention and order his or her release if the detention is not lawful, in accordance with their international obligations”.

The past chairs of the Working Group have been supreme court justices from France, Algeria, Spain and Senegal. Professor Andenas is the first chair who is not a judge; he is a professor at the University of Oslo, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford, and past Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, London, and of the Centre of European Law, King’s College, University of London. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza, the University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and Sciences-Po, Paris.

He is a bencher of Inner Temple.