PSU SIA Director Tiyanjana Maluwa appointed legal expert to African Union High Level Panel on Darfur

The director of Penn State’s School of International Affairs, Professor Tiyanjana Maluwa, has accepted appointment as legal expert to a High Level Panel on Darfur convened by the African Union. The panel is chaired by former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki, and includes as members former Burundi President Pierre Buyoya, former Nigerian Head of State Abdusalam Abubakar, and former Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher El Sayed. The African Union has asked the panel to make recommendations on how best to comprehensively address issues of accountability, justice, and national reconciliation and healing in Darfur.

Maluwa, who also holds the Montague Chair in Law at Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law, served previously as legal advisor to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and as the first legal counsel to the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union). An acclaimed scholar of public international law and human rights law, Maluwa has undertaken several assignments as an expert and consultant for the United Nations and the African Union, and currently serves as a member of the international jury charged with awarding the Stockholm Prize in Criminology.