International Human Rights Law / Right to Life / Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights / Right of Peaceful Assembly / African Regional Human Rights System
Christof Heyns is Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria and Director of its Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa. He also teaches human rights at Oxford University and is a member of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee, the independent expert body that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Professor Heyns is recognized internationally as a leading expert in the field of international human rights law, including on right to life issues and regional human rights mechanisms, and has published widely on these matters.
From 2010 to 2016, he was UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He led the drafting the following international law instruments: the Minnesota Protocol on the investigation of potentially unlawful death (2016); UN human rights guidance on the use of less-lethal weapons in law enforcement (2020); the UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment 37 on the right of peaceful assembly (2020); and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights General Comment 3 on the right to life (2015).
Professor Heyns was formerly Director of the Centre for Human Rights in the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, as well as Dean of that Faculty.
Mohamed Azazy
Master in transitional justice - CourseThis course aims at providing students with an overview of the scope and limits of two rights that are often of central importance during transitions: the right to life and the right of peaceful assembly.
Al Jazeera
Short CourseThis online short course will examine the protection afforded by international human rights law in these contexts, with a specific focus on the right to peaceful assembly – which is at the heart of such movements –, and the right to life – which is often violated during such transitional moments.
Christof Heyns, Dapo Akande, Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, Thompson Chengeta
International and Comparative Law Quarterly
Christof Heyns
Human Rights Quarterly
Christof Heyns, Magnus Killander
Oxford University Press
Christof Heyns, Sharath Srinivasan
Human Rights Quarterly