Fuad Zarbiyev was elected during the 42nd Meeting of States parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 15 June in New York. His term will begin on 1 January 2027 and is for a period of four years. 

The Human Rights Committee is a body of 18 independent experts trusted with the monitoring of the implementation of the Covenant by its State parties. It examines the periodic reports submitted by the States as well as individual complaints regarding alleged violations of the Covenant and prepares general comments about the content of the Covenant and its Optional Protocols. It also has the power to consider inter-state complaints. 

Fuad Zarbiyev is a long-standing member of the Geneva Graduate Institute community, having earned his PhD in International Law from the Institute in 2010 and taught at the Institute since 2016. In addition to being Professor of International Law, he is a Faculty Associate at the Global Governance Centre and Programme Director of the LL.M. in International Law.  

Previously, he was a Global Research Fellow at New York University School of Law and worked as an associate attorney and counsel with the New York office of the international law firm of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP. He is the recipient of the Diploma of the Hague Academy of International Law, the Diploma (with distinction) of the René Cassin International Institute of Human Rights, the James Crawford Prize in International Dispute Settlement, and the Prize for Best Article in International Dispute Resolution of the Dispute Resolution Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. He has served as Director of Studies at The Hague Academy of International Law and has held visiting appointments at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris and at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University. 

Of his election to the Human Rights Committee, Fuad Zarbiyev said: 

I am honored by the trust that the States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have placed in me by electing me to the Human Rights Committee. Roberto Unger famously compared law professors to ‘a priesthood that had lost their faith and kept their jobs’. Many international lawyers today may indeed resemble the pastor in Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, who continues to celebrate Mass out of a sense of duty despite having lost his faith. I may belong to a species facing extinction, but I have not lost an iota of my belief in international law and multilateral institutions, despite the pressures on the rule of law and the growing skepticism toward international institutions and norms that we have been witnessing across many regions of the world. At such moments, the work of institutions like the Human Rights Committee becomes even more relevant and more indispensable and I look forward to contributing to it.