The Government of the Russian Federation has nominated Bakhtiyar Tuzmukhamedov LL.M. ’94 as a permanent judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Currently a counselor to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and a professor of international law at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, Tuzmukhamedov previously served the Constitutional Court as senior adviser, counselor of the Department of International Law, and acting head of the department of International Law.

A 1977 graduate of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he returned to his alma mater in 1979 to work on his dissertation, covering the UN work with regard to the Indian Ocean peace zone proposal. In 1983, he was conferred with a degree of the Candidate of Juridical Science. In 1994, he received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

A longtime professor of international at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, he has also served as a research fellow, senior research fellow, associate professor of international Law at the academy.

Tuzmukhamedov is vice president of the Russian Association of International Law, on the board of experts of the PIR-Center, a member of the International Law Association (formerly co-rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament Law), and a member of the International Consortium — Forum on Challenges of Peace Operations.

The deputy editor-in-chief of the Moscow Journal of International Law and a member of the editorial board of the International Review of the Red Cross, Tuzmukhamedov has also served as an adviser in 2009 to the United Nations Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations.

He wrote and co-wrote several books published in the former USSR and in Russia, as well as in the United States, including a 1991 study “International Law and International Security: Military and Political Dimensions.” His recent publications include: “Russian Federation: The Pendulum of Powers and Accountability,” which appeared in “Democratic Accountability and the Use of Military Force in International Relations,” Cambridge University Press, 2003, p.257-279; and “The Implementation of International Humanitarian Law in the Russian Federation” – International Review of the Red Cross, 2003, vol. 85, # 850, p.385-396.

Tuzmukhamedov’s nomination follows the resignation of Judge Sergei Alekseevich Egorov (Russian Federation).

See also: A 2005 Harvard Law Bulletin profile of Geraldine Umugwaneza LL.M. ’05 and her work for the Gacaca courts in Rwanda.