VII Other News
| Date | 01 December 1993 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934419301100412 |
| Published date | 01 December 1993 |
| Subject Matter | Part B: Human Rights News |
Human Rights News
China and Indonesia indicate that others believe the best way to settle the issue isconfrontation
with the West.
vn OTHER NEWS
A. Professor Torkel Opsahl, 17
March
1931 - 16
September
1993 •
Torkel Opsahl, Professor
of
Law at the University of Oslo and a well-known international
expert on human rights, died suddenly of a heart attack on Thursday, 16 September 1993,
in Geneva. At the time of his death, Professor Opsahl was the Acting Chairman of the
UN
Commission to
report
on violations of humanitarian law in the territory
of
the former
Yugoslavia, pursuantto Security Council resolution 780 (1992). He had recently completed
his work as Chairman
of
the Initiative
'92
Commission of Inquiry on ways forward for
Northern Ireland (the Opsahl Commission), whose report was published earlier this year.
Torkel Opsahl graduated from the Faculty
of
Law, University
of
Oslo in 1955, gaining
the highest marks this century. He then attended university in Moscow and New York,
a highly unusual academic programme for the coldest part of the Cold
War
era. On his
return to Oslo, he earned adoctorate in law with a dissertation on the delegation
of
parliamentary authority.
He
was named Professor of Law at the University
of
Oslo in 1965.
Professor Opsahl's involvement with international human rights matters dates from
early on in his career.
He
was the only person to serve concurrently on the European
Commission of
Human
Rights (1970-1986) and the Human Rights Committee established
under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1977-1986), exerting
considerable moraland intellectual influence over the evolution of boththese treaty bodies.
He served on a number
of
observer missions for intergovernmental organisations (e.g.,
the UN Secretary General's 1985 and 1988 missions to prisoner-of-war camps in
Iran
and
Iraq), andnon-governmental organisations, such as AmnestyInternational and the International
HumanRights
Law
Group. He also served on a number of boards and internationaladvisory
councils of such respected human rights groups as the International Commission
of
Jurists
and was both one
of
the founders and the Chairman
of
the Board of the Norwegian Institute
of
Human Rights.
ProfessorOpsahlpublishedextensively on constitutional, international and human rights
law
in both English and Norwegian.
Those of us who were privileged to
work
closely with Torkel Opsahl know that we
will never see his equal for intelligence, sensitivity and integrity. His death is a great loss
to the international
human
rights community.
>10
Donna Gomien, Norwegian Institute of Human Rights
501
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