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'''Alfred-Maurice de Zayas''' (born 1947) is a ] ], ], and ]. He is currently a professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, and was formerly a senior lawyer with the Office of the ], Secretary of the Human Rights Committee, and the Chief of Petitions. '''Alfred-Maurice de Zayas''' (born 1947) is a -born ] ], ], and ]. He is currently a professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, and was formerly a senior lawyer with the Office of the ], Secretary of the Human Rights Committee, and the Chief of Petitions.


De Zayas has written and lectured extensively on ] subjects, including the jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the ], the US-run prisons at ], "]" in the former ], the ], the invasion of ] by ] in 1974, the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. He is an advocate of "the right to homeland" as a universal human right. De Zayas has written and lectured extensively on ] subjects, including the jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the ], the US-run prisons at ], "]" in the former ], the ], the invasion of ] by ] in 1974, the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. He is an advocate of "the right to homeland" as a universal human right.

Revision as of 17:11, 12 November 2007

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 1947) is a -born American lawyer, writer, and historian. He is currently a professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, and was formerly a senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Secretary of the Human Rights Committee, and the Chief of Petitions.

De Zayas has written and lectured extensively on human rights subjects, including the jurisprudence of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Armenian Genocide, the US-run prisons at Guantanamo Bay, "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, the expulsion of Eastern European Germans after the Second World War, the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974, the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples. He is an advocate of "the right to homeland" as a universal human right.

Since 2006 he has been President of the PEN Club in the ethnic French cantons of Switzerland. As long-time President of the UN Society of Writers and member of the International Rainer Maria Rilke Society (Sierre, Switzerland), he published the first English language translation of Rilke's "Larenopfer", 90 poems dedicated to Rilke's homeland of Bohemia, and hometown of Prague (with a historical commentary, Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005). With this book, de Zayas opened a new facet of Rilke research: Rilke as Heimatdichter or poet of the homeland, poète du terroir - spanning Rilke's early poetry characterized by enthusiasm for the beauties and the history of his homeland through Rilke's final poetic testament -- more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to the Valais in Switzerland (Quatrains Valaisains, Roses, Fenetres, Vergers), Rilke's "Wahlheimat", where he spent the last years of his life at the Château de Muzot in Sierre and where he is buried in nearby Raron. Hitherto Rilke had been understood primarily as a metaphyscial poet, as a poet's poet, but never seen as a homeland poet. Zayas has lectured and published on Rilke's search for a sense of belonging and his grateful attachment to a landscape and to the real people who live there.

While de Zayas' literary output and his international law and human rights publications are mainstream, his peace activism and his publications on Germany have rendered him somewhat controversial. In 1975, he published a study in the Harvard International Law Journal ("International Law and Mass Population Transfers", Vol. 16, p. 207-258) in which he questioned the legality of the expulsion of 15 million Germans from their homelands after World War II, invoking the Atlantic Charter, the Hague Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles. The article was followed by the book Nemesis at Potsdam (Routledge, 1977), focusing on the degree of responsibility of the Anglo-Americans for decisions leading to the expulsions of the Germans. U.S. Ambassador and Eisenhower advisor Robert Murphy wrote the preface. In the same year, an enlarged German edition was published by the foremost legal publisher in Germany, C.H. Beck, becoming an instant bestseller, and quickly reissued by Germany's largest pocketbook publisher dtv. In this book de Zayas took an inter-disciplinary approach to the phenomenon of population transfers and examined the German case study from both the historical and the legal perspectives. De Zayas is the first American historian to have broken the taboo concerning this heretofore neglected topic.

His second book, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau (University of Nebraska Press) was published in Germany by Universitas/Langen Müller, and similarly became a bestseller. Professor Howard Levie, a noted expert in international humanitarian law, wrote the preface. This book describes the work of the legal department of the Wehrmacht, which investigated alleged Allied war crimes, including the murder of Ukrainians in Lviv by the NKVD 1941, the murder of Polish prisoners of war at Katyn 1940, and the sinking of the German hospital ship "Tübingen" by the British in 1944. De Zayas was the first researcher to see and evaluate the 226 volumes of extant records of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle, which had been classified documents in the United States and had just been returned by the US National Archives to the German Bundesarchiv. The book was savagely attacked in the media of the Soviet Union and its satellites. Notwithstanding criticism from a few historians in Germany, Nemesis at Potsdam and The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau were well received in the academic community, are used in colleges and universities, and remain in print thirty years after their initial publication, in the 14th and 7th revised and updated editions, respectively.

Since his retirement from the UN in 2003, de Zayas has become a vocal critic of the Iraq war, of indefinite detention in Guantanamo, of secret CIA prisons, of nuclear pollution, extreme poverty and also of political correctness. He chastises the elites of the United States, Great Britain, and Germany for their lack of intellectual honesty and their empty lip service to human rights. In this connection he has been compared with Noam Chomsky. He has participated on many United Nations round tables, including with Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Professor Jean Ziegler, and with the Chairman of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Luis de Alba. He is an advocate of the human right to peace and a signatory of the "Luarca Declaration on the Human Right to Peace" (http://www.ngoic.org/_upload/2007/9/12-9-2007_Human_Rights_to_Peace-231808.doc).

Biography

De Zayas` family is of Spanish and French descent, but de Zayas grew up in Chicago. He earned his juris doctor from Harvard Law School and a doctorate of philosophy in modern history from the Georg-August University of Göttingen. He practiced corporate law in New York and family law in Florida, as member of the New York and Florida Bars. He was also a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tübingen and research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. 1978-80 he participated in the German-American Schoolbook Commission at the Georg Eckert Institut in Braunschweig and published a long article on the subject of prejudice and stereotypes in schoolbooks in "Aus Politik of Zeitgeschichte" (1980).

During the course of his legal and academic career, he has been a visiting professor of international law and of world history at a number of institutions, including the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), the DePaul University College of Law (Chicago), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, the Schiller International University (Leysin), the Académie Internationale de Droit Constitutionnel (Tunis), the University of Trier, the Santa Clara Law School, the Center for Applied Studies in International Negotiations (CASIN, Genève), the Institut de Droits de l'Homme Strasbourg, the Felix Ermacora Institute in Vienna, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund (Sweden), and the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). He has been member of doctoral commissions at the universities of Geneva, Amsterdam, and Alcalá de Henares. While at the U.N., he was the founder and editor of the series "Selected Decisions of the Human Rights Committee under the Optional Protocol." He is a regular participant in panels and round tables at the United Nations, where he represents the International Society for Human Rights. During the 4th, 5th and 6th sessions of the Human Rights Council he participated in panels on various issues, moderated a panel on human dignity and presented the statement of Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on International Day of Human Rights, 21 September 2007.

De Zayas regularly publishes op-ed articles and essays in German and Swiss newspapers, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, Das Parlament, Der Spiegel, Bayernkurier, Zeit Fragen, and the Tribune de Genève. He has made television appearances on round tables and panels for CNN, WDR, WDR's Monitor, WDR's "Alte und neue Heimat", Phoenix, 3sat, ZDF, ZDF-Magazin, Südwestfunk/Baden-Baden, "Report", Aschaffenburger Gespräche, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Léman Bleu (Geneva) etc. He has been legal and historical consultant to numerous television documentaries in the US and Germany, including the Discovery Channel film on the sinking of the refugee ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", and the Bayerischer Rundfunk documentary "Flucht und Vertreibung". He regularly gives radio interviews to Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Welle, Radio Cité (Geneva), WBAI (New York), and other stations.

De Zayas is a Roman Catholic and resides with his Dutch wife in Geneva.

Civic activities

Da Zayas was co-President with Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre of the Association Suisses et Internationaux de Genève (1996-2006) and is currently treasurer of Millennium Solidarity, a Geneva non-governmental organization working for world peace and the eradication of poverty http://millennium-solidarity.net/committee.html. He is a member of the Asociación Española para el Desarrollo del Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos (AEDIDH), which in October 2006 produced the "Luarca Declaration on the Human Right to Peace". He has represented AEDIDH, the International P.E.N., and the International Society for Human Rights at round tables at the United Nations in Geneva. According to press articles, he has been a registered Republican in the United States since 1968, when he was a Harvard student and active member of the Harvard Republicans, but has voted for the Democratic party since 2004. He has appeared as an expert witness in United States federal courts and before the German Parliament.

De Zayas is a member of numerous professional oganizations and non-governmental organizations, including Amnesty International, Point Coeur, the German Society for International Law, the Forschungskreis Vereinte Nationen, and the . He sits on the advisory boards of several organizations, including the Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte in Frankfurt, and is a member of the International Expert Panel for a European Solution in Cyprus (2004-2007). He served for 15 years as president of the United Nations Society of Writers (Geneva) and was the founder of the UN literary review Ex Tempore ISSN 1020-6604, which has published 17 issues. As of 2007, he is still editor-in-chief of Ex Tempore. He has also published in the literary journal of the PEN Club Suisse romande "L'Escarpe". A member of International PEN since 1989, he was secretary of the Swiss-French PEN in 2002-06, and is currently its president. He has published poetry in English, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch, translated Rainer Maria Rilke into English, French, and Spanish, translated Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse into English. De Zayas received the "Ehrengabe zum Georg Dehio Preis" in 1980, the Human Rights Award of the Danube Suevian Society of the United States and Canada in 1985, the "Plakete für Verdienste für das Selbstbestimmungsrecht" in 1997, the "Humanitas Ring" in 1998, the Walter Eckart Prize for History in 2001, the East Prussian Cultural Prize in 2002, the ANC Scholarly Excellence Award (Los Angeles) in 2003, and a Menschenrechtspreis in Munich in 2004.

Selected works

  • Nemesis at Potsdam: the Expulsion of the Germans from the East. Preface by Ambassador Robert Murphy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1989. (1st edition published in 1977 in London and Boston by Routledge) ISBN 0-8032-4910-1 Updated seventh edition published 2003 by Picton Press in Rockland, Maine. ISBN 0-89725-360-4. Critically acclaimed in the American Journal of International Law, Herald Tribune, Times Educational Supplement, Choice. German version, Die Nemesis von Potsdam, Die Anglo-Amerikaner und die Vertreibung der Deutschen (original version with C.H.Beck, Muenchen, then dtv and Ullstein), 14th revised edition, Herbig, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7766-2454-X, critically acclaimed in die Zeit, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (2006), Die Presse (Vienna, 2006).
  • A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. ISBN 1-4039-7308-3. Preface by Professor Charles Barber. New revised edition with Palgrave/Macmillan, New York 2006, ISBN-10: 1-4939-7308-3. Critically acclaimed in The Times, Publishers' Weekly, Army, Netherlands International Law Review. German version, "Die deutschen Vertriebenen", fifth revised edition with Leopold Stocker Verlag (Ares), Graz, Austria 2006, critically acclaimed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2006).
  • The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945. (With Walter Rabus.) Preface by Professor Howard Levie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8032-9908-7. New revised edition with Picton Press, Rockland, Maine, ISBN 0-89725-421-X.The author was interviewed by CNN on this book on 4 April 1990. Critically acclaimed in the American Journal of International Law, Cambridge Law Journal, Archiv des Völkerrechts, Historische Zeitschrift, Das Parlament. Parts of the book are reproduced for study purposes in the Red Cross Handbook "How does Law Protect in War?" edited by Marco Sassoli and Antoine Bouvier, ICRC, Geneva 1999.ISBN 2-88145-110-1. German version:
  • "Die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle für Verletzungen des Völkerrechts" Universitas Verlag, München, 7th revised edition 2001, prior editions with Ullstein Verlag, Berlin. Critically acclaimed in Die Zeit, Die Welt, Der Spiegel. A prime time television special based on this book was aired in Channel 1 of German national television ARD/WDR on 18 and 21 March 1983 to positive reviews in the German press, Los Angeles Times, Guardian, etc. Issued in 2005 as DVD by Polar Film, ISBN-10: 3937163859.
  • Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht. Auf dem Weg zu einer Weltkonvention. (The Right to the Homeland is a Human Right: Towards an International Convention.) Universitas Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-8004-1416-3, critically acclaimed in Netherlands International Law Review, Die Welt (2002).
  • "Rainer Maria Rilke. Die Larenopfer" Bilingual English-German edition with commentary. Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005. ISBN 1-59709-010-7, critically acclaimed in the Blätter der Rilke Gesellschaft.
  • "International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms", co-editor and co-author with Gudmundur Alfredsson and Bertram Ramcharan, Kluwer, The Hague, 2001. New revised edition 2007.
  • "Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice" in collaboration with Professor Cherif Bassiouni, Transnational Press, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-941320-87-1
  • "Ethnic Cleansing: Applicable Norms, Emerging Jurisprudence, Implementable Remedies" in John Carey (ed.) International Humanitarian Law: Origins, Transnational Press, New York 2003, pp. 283-307.
  • 18 entries in the Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, edited by Rudolf Bernhardt, Elsevier, Amsterdam, Vol. 1-5, 1992-2003, including "United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights", "Combatants", "Spanish Civil War", "Population Expulsion", "Repatriation", "Open Towns", "Curzon Line", "United States Dependent Territories", "European Recovery Program", etc.
  • "Die amerikanische Besetzung Guantánamos", Institut für Rechtspolitik an der Universität Trier, Rechtspolitisches Forum Nr. 28, 2005, ISSN 1616-8828.
  • entries in Dinah Shelton (ed.) Encyclopedia of Genocide (Macmillan Reference 2004), "Aggression", "Ismael Enver", "Nelson Mandela", "Raoul Wallenberg".
  • "The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights" in Helmut Volger (ed.) Concise Encyclopaedia of the United Nations, Kluwer, The Hague, 2002.
  • "Karl Ernst Smidt" in Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland, Aurich 2007.
  • "The Procedures and Case-Law of the United Nations Human Rights Committee" in Carlos Jiménez Piernas, The Legal Practice in International Law and European Community Law, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden 2007.
  • "The Istanbul Pogrom of 6-7 September 1955 in the Light of Intrnational Law" in Genocide Studies and Prevention, Vol. 2, No. 2 (August 2007) pp. 137-155.
  • "Minority Rights in the New Millennium" in The Geneva Post Quarterly, May 2007, pp. 155-208.
  • "The Follow-up Procedure of the UN Human Rights Committee" in International Commission of Jurists Review, No. 47, 1991.
  • "Der Nürnberger Prozess" in Alexander Demandt "Macht und Recht", C.H.Beck, Munich 1996.
  • "Der Krieg im ehemaligen Yugoslawien aus völkerrechtlicher Sicht" in Tilman Zülch (ed.) "Ethnische Säuberung-Völkermord", Luchterhand, Hamburg 1993.
  • editor of the United Nations series "Human Rights Committee. Selected Decisions under the Optional Protocol" CCPR/C/OP/1, CCPR/C/OP/2, etc.
  • Poetry in English, French, Spanish, German and Russian published in various literary journals and newspapers under his name and also under the pseudonym Mauricio Gancefort.

External links

http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/fileadmin/images/Das_IfZ/jb2005.pdf http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/id=35&count=37&recno=10&type=rezausstellungen&sort=datum&order=down http://www.horizons-et-debats.ch/index.php?id=506 http://www.fondationrilke.ch/pages/fr/conferences_lectures.htm

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