2024 M.C. Bassiouni Justice Award winner
Gunnar M. Ekeløve-Slydal
Mr. Gunnar M. Ekeløve-Slydal has been granted the 2024 M.C. Bassiouni Justice Award in recognition of (a) his insightful writings that reflect a holistic understanding of international criminal and human rights law and practice, drawing on more than 30 years of extensive engagement with victims in numerous countries, his advocacy vis-à-vis public authorities and international organisations, and his philosophical training; (b) his enduring commitment to public education and dissemination of knowledge on international human rights and criminal law, through his participation in public discourse and nourishing of diverse voices in the Nordic Journal of Human Rights, one of the oldest journals in its field; (c) his collaborative and prudent leadership of the Coalition for International Criminal Justice (CICJ), whose statements have become a leading source of policy advice on criminal justice for core international crimes; (d) his leadership role in multi-year documentation of serious human rights violations that may amount to core international crimes, meticulously implementing specialised software in partnership with innovative technology experts (notably I-DOC); and (e) his courtesy and modesty, regardless of position, and his courage as evidenced by his writings criticising former judges of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as well as his own country’s treatment of the Sámi minority in Norway.
Mr. Ekeløve-Slydal, a Norwegian philosopher, is Director of the Coalition for International Criminal Justice (2022-), Deputy Secretary-General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (1997-), and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southeast Norway (2016-). He is also Coordinator of the Norwegian NGO-Forum for Human Rights (2016-) and Member of the Magnitsky Human Rights Awards Committee. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights and, early in its life, Head of Office of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights (established by Torkel Opsahl, Asbjørn Eide and Jan Helgesen, subsequently renamed the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, a pioneer human rights institution). He has consistently lobbied for incremental enhancement of national capacity to investigate and prosecute core international crimes since the early 2000s. He holds a Cand. Mag. in philosophy (summa cum laude) from the University of Oslo, following studies in mathematics there and being Norway’s 1981 Examen Artium valedictorian (high school), with later studies at, inter alia, the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre in Copenhagen.
The Award is granted by the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP). The 2024 Award Committee consisted of Professor Ling Yan (China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing), Professor Claus Kreß (Cologne University), Professor William A. Schabas (Middlesex University London), Associate Professor Cheah Wui Ling (National University of Singapore), Mr. Arne Willy Dahl (former Judge Advocate General, Norway), Committee Secretary Devasheesh Bais (CILRAP Fellow and Advocate before the High Court of Indore), and CILRAP Director Morten Bergsmo (Committee Chair). The decision was made by consensus.
