Professor Sir Nigel Rodley KBE, a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from the United Kingdom, passed away on 25 January 2017 at the age of 75, following a short illness.
He was a member of the advisory board of ‘Justice for Victims of 1988 Massacre in Iran’ (JVMI).
From 2001 to 2016, Sir Nigel was also a member of the UN Human Rights Committee, a body of 18 human rights experts that monitors UN member states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. He served as Chairman of the committee from 2013 to 2014. He was also President of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
From 1973 to 1990, he was the Legal Adviser of Amnesty International and Visiting Lecturer in Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Research Fellow 1983). In 1990, he was appointed as Reader in Law at the University of Essex and Professor of Law in 1994. He was Dean of Law from 1992 to 1995. He served as the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture from 1993 to 2001.
In 1998 he was knighted in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list for services to Human Rights and International Law and in 2000 he received an honorary LLD from Dalhousie University. He was a joint recipient of the American Society of International Law’s 2005 Goler T. Butcher Medal for distinguished work in human rights. In 2008 he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians. Sir Nigel was also Chair of the Human Rights Centre of University of Essex’s Law School.
JVMI pays tribute to Sir Nigel’s work for the promotion of human rights, in particular in Iran, and his unwavering determination to compel the UN to establish a Commission of Inquiry to probe the Iranian regime’s #1988massacre of 30,000 political prisoners and to bring the perpetrators to account.