Phoebe Nyawade Okowa is a Kenyan lawyer and Professor of Public International Law and Director of Graduate Studies at Queen Mary University of London. In 2021 she was elected to the International Law Commission for a period of five years, starting January 1, 2023,[1] becoming the first African woman to serve as a member of the Commission.[2][3][4] In 2017 she was appointed a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague by Kenya.[5] An advocate of the High Court of Kenya, she has acted as counsel and consultant to governments and non-governmental organisations on questions of international law before domestic and international courts including the International Court of Justice.
The government of Kenya nominated Okowa for election to the UN International Law Commission[6] in May 2021.[7] She was co-nominated by the United Kingdom and endorsed by the African Union.[8] Okowa received 162 votes in the United Nations General Assembly.[9]
The International Law Commission (ILC) is a body of experts responsible for helping develop and codify international law. Under the ILC Statute, its members “shall be persons of recognised competence in international law”.[10] It is composed of 34 individuals who are elected by the United Nations General Assembly for a five year term.
Okowa was born in Kericho on 1 January 1965 to Luo parents. She graduated at the top of her class with a Bachelor of Law (LLB) with First Class Honours from the University of Nairobi, Kenya in 1987. Okowa was the first woman to be awarded a first-class honours degree in the history of the Faculty of Law of the University of Nairobi.[11] She was called to the Kenyan Bar as an Advocate in 1990.
Okowa then studied at Wadham College, Oxford on a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholarship, obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) in 1990. She completed her doctoral thesis (D.Phil.) at Oxford in 1994 under the supervision of Professor Sir Ian Brownlie, the Chichele Professor of International Law. Her monograph on State Responsibility for Transboundary Air Pollution[12] published by Oxford University Press remains the definitive work on the legal challenges that environmental harm presents for traditional methods of accountability in International Law.[13]
Okowa taught[14] Public International Law, British Constitutional Law and Private International Law as a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Bristol. She has held visiting appointments at the University of Lille, University of Helsinki, Stockholm University and WZB Berlin Social Science Center for Global Constitutionalism and has lectured for the United Nations at its Regional Course on International Law for Africa. In 2011 and 2015 she was Hauser Global Visiting Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.
Okowa is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the African Yearbook of International and Comparative Law and of the Advisory Board of the African Association of International Law.[15] She is a member of The Society of Legal Scholars.
Okowa sits on the International Advisory Board of the Stockholm Centre for International Law and the Executive Committee of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S).[13]
Okowa has acted as counsel and consultant to governments and non-governmental organisations on questions of international law before domestic and international courts including before the International Court of Justice, involving cases concerning the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, maritime delimitations, the Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965,[16] and Legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem,[17][18][19] and before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law.[20][21]
Okowa primarily resides in Cambridge, UK. She is married to Dr Leon Bennum, Chief Scientist of The Biodiversity Consultancy.[22]