School of Law

Professor of International Law

I am Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds. I currently also serve as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia and a Member of the Advisory Group on Human Right to the British Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Office. I did my doctorate in law at the University of Oxford after which I began my academic career as a Lecturer in Law at the University of Hull where I became a Professor of Law in 1999. I joined the University of Leeds in 2004 as a Professor of International Law, a position that I still hold to date. I also have taught at universities in London, New York, and The Hague.

I am a practising Barrister in England. Prior to qualifying for the English Bar, I was a consultant on international legal matters to Mishcon de Reya Solicitors in London, and a legal adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Nepal. I also have advised a number of other countries on international legal matters and was appointed by the World Trade Organization to the Roster of Panellists of its Dispute Settlement System.

I have published six books in various areas in international law and a good number of scholarly articles in all major international law journals. I have a string of honours to my name and have been awarded prestigious academic prizes for my work, including the Dasturzada Pavry Memorial Prize by the University of Oxford for an outstanding DPhil thesis, an SPTL Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship by the British Society of Legal Scholars for one of my books and the Josephine Onoh Memorial Prize as best LLM student of the year by the University of Hull. I have also won two scholarships - first was a British Council Scholarship to Hull for his LLM studies and second was an FCO Scholarship for his doctoral studies at Oxford.

I was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by Her Majesty the Queen of the UK in 2004 for my services to international law and to Britain-Nepal relations. Speaking at the OBE investiture on 19 October 2004 in London, Mr. Jack Straw, the then British Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Office, stated that I had “made a highly distinguished contribution to our understanding of international law, and to its evolution” and that my work in international law had "spanned almost every aspect of it - with a special focus on issues ... which make a real difference to people's lives." (Newsletter of the International Law Association (ILA), London, 2005, Newsletter No. 22, p.10).

I also was appointed by Her Majesty the Queen of the UK as a Crown representative on the Governing Body of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in 2007. I am at present a Vice-President of the Asian Society of International Law (with its Secretariat at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore) and an Editor of its flagship journal, the Asian Journal of International Law, published by Cambridge University Press. I was appointed by the Government of Nepal as a Trustee of the National Trust for the Conservation of Nature in Nepal between 2008 and 2011. I was founder Chairman of the Britain-Nepal Academic Council, London, between 2000 and 2010. I currently provide voluntary services as a Trustee and Co-chair to a major British medical charity – the Britain-Nepal Medical Trust – helping directly the needy in Nepal.