Chile Eboe-Osuji
The rules-based international order is no longer a stable backdrop for global business. Sanctions regimes, cross-border conflicts, and open questions about state accountability now reshape capital allocation and market access decisions. Leaders need to know where international law actually holds and where it is being contested.
Chile Eboe-Osuji, the 4th President of the International Criminal Court, shows boards how international law, sanctions regimes, and state accountability now shape operational risk across borders.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Chile Eboe-Osuji
- Led the International Criminal Court through its most politically contested period, including the 2020 US sanctions imposed on the Court’s senior officials. He speaks from direct experience of how international institutions hold together under political pressure.
- Wrote End of Immunity (2024), published by Prometheus, a study of accountability for heads of state. The book traces the legal history from Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles through Nuremberg to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It gives boards and policy teams a grounded read on where prosecutions of sitting leaders are heading.
- Has judged at the appellate level and prosecuted at the trial level, across the ICC, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Holds academic appointments at Stanford Law School, Harvard’s Carr Center, and UCLA. Very few voices in the field speak from both the bench and the prosecution table.
- First ICC official, current or former, to receive the Goler T. Butcher Medal from the American Society of International Law. It is the field’s most recognised honour for contributions to international human rights law.
- Serves as a sitting judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice since April 2025. His commentary on international law reflects active judicial practice.
Biography highlights
- 4th President of the International Criminal Court, 2018 to 2021; ICC judge from 2012 to 2021
- Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice, sworn in April 2025
- Former Legal Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights under Navi Pillay (2010-2012); earlier senior prosecution counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, including the Charles Taylor appeals
- Author of End of Immunity (2024) and International Law and Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts (2012); editor of Protecting Humanity (2010)
- Goler T. Butcher Medal, American Society of International Law (2022); first ICC official, current or former, to receive the honour
- Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School; Senior Fellow at the Carr Center, Harvard Kennedy School; Paul Martin Senior Professor at the University of Windsor
Biography
In 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the most senior officials of the International Criminal Court, including the Court’s Prosecutor. The Court’s President at the time was Chile Eboe-Osuji. His answer was to hold the Court’s course and defend its mandate publicly, including on BBC HARDtalk with Stephen Sackur and at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He came to the presidency as a career international lawyer. Earlier he had been senior prosecution counsel at the UN tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone, including the Charles Taylor appeal. He then served as Legal Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva under Navi Pillay. Elected to the ICC bench in 2011, he presided over the Kenya cases and the Gbagbo and Blé Goudé appeals before becoming President in 2018.
His 2024 book End of Immunity, published by Prometheus, is the work he has been building toward across his career. It traces the legal history of head-of-state accountability from Article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles through Nuremberg to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Rules making leaders answerable for aggression and crimes against humanity rest on foundations far older than contemporary politics. Those rules matter to anyone whose organisation operates across borders.
Since leaving the ICC he has taught at Stanford, UCLA, and Harvard’s Carr Center, and held the Paul Martin Senior Professorship at the University of Windsor. He was appointed to the bench of the Caribbean Court of Justice in January 2025 and sworn in that April. For leadership teams trying to understand how international law is actually read by the people who decide it, few voices carry more weight.
Key speaking topics
- International law and the rules-based global order
- Accountability for heads of state and political leaders
- Geopolitical risk and armed conflict
- Sanctions, sovereignty, and state immunity
- Prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity
- The International Criminal Court and the future of international justice
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams at organisations operating across multiple jurisdictions
- Chief Risk Officers, General Counsel, and heads of political-risk functions with exposure to sanctions regimes and cross-border conflict
- Policy leaders and public-affairs executives at firms whose business is shaped by state action and international law
- Institutional investors and capital allocators pricing geopolitical risk into cross-border decisions
Audience outcomes
- An authoritative read on where international criminal law is heading, from someone who has written both the rulings and the books
- A grounded sense of why state accountability, sanctions, and head-of-state prosecution are relevant to commercial decisions
- The vocabulary to discuss live geopolitical situations (Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa) with legal precision
- A direct answer to the question most boards are now asking: is the rules-based international order actually holding?
Talks
A case for recognising peace as the foundational right on which all other rights depend, and for treating its protection as a binding international obligation.
Key takeaways:
- Why the current international system under-values peace as a right in its own terms
- How recognition of peace as a right would change the obligations of states and international institutions
- The practical implications for organisations operating in conflict-prone regions
A return to the post-World War architecture built to eradicate war as a tool of state policy, and an examination of where that architecture is holding and where it is failing.
Key takeaways:
- The legal and institutional foundations of the modern rules-based order, from the Kellogg-Briand Pact onwards
- How current conflicts are testing those foundations, and what is at stake when arbitration is refused
- What leaders in commerce, policy, and diplomacy can do to reinforce existing settlement mechanisms
A direct account of why the international legal order holds everyone accountable for grave human rights violations, including sitting heads of state, drawn from the speaker’s judicial and prosecutorial work.
Key takeaways:
- Why the principle of head-of-state immunity has eroded in international law, from Article 227 of the Versailles Treaty to the present
- What the ICC actually does and where its jurisdictional limits sit in practice
- How corporate and institutional actors can find themselves inside these legal frameworks
The case for using international criminal law to restrain those who inflict extensive, lasting or severe damage to the natural environment through recklessness or greed.
Key takeaways:
- The legal and ethical arguments for criminalising severe environmental harm
- Where the ecocide proposal currently sits in international institutional debate
- What criminalisation would mean for corporate decision-making in extractive and high-impact industries
Why preventing genocide requires political action by states, because legal proceedings by their nature arrive too late.
Key takeaways:
- Why judicial proceedings cannot prevent genocide already in progress
- The responsibilities of states, international institutions, and civil society in genocide prevention
- How the international community has and has not met these responsibilities, with lessons from Rwanda and other cases