John Dugard is a South African who lives in The Hague, Netherlands. He holds law degrees from the Universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. In South Africa he directed the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, attached to the University of the Witwatersrand, which engaged in human rights advocacy, research and litigation during the apartheid years. More recently he has taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Leiden.
He served as a member of the UN International Law Commission from 1997 to 2011, and as a judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice from 2000 to 2018. He has chaired two international fact-finding missions into violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. From 2001 to 2008 he was UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He has written extensively on human rights and apartheid in South Africa, Namibia and Palestine. His memoir Confronting Apartheid. A Personal History of South Africa, Namibia and Palestine was published in 2018.