Vojin Dimitrijević


Vojin Dimitrijević was a law professor, public intellectual, and a prominent Serbian human rights activist and international law expert. Professor Dimitrijević was for many years the director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, a Serbian non-governmental organisation opposed to the regime of Slobodan Milošević. He was a member of the Institut de droit international, received honorary doctorates in law from McGill University and the University of Kent, and was a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.

Biography

Vojin Dimitrijević was born on 9 July 1932 in Rijeka.
In 1956 he graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, where he also obtained his doctorate in 1965 and continued to work as a professor from 1960 until 1998. He was ordered to retire prematurely in 1998, while in the rank of full professor, due to his opposition to the newly passed and repressive Universities Act. From 1995 he was the director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, and from 2005 a professor at the Faculty of Law of the Union University in Belgrade. Dimitrijević was also a visiting professor at the universities of Split, Sarajevo, Virginia, Oslo, and Lund.
From 2000 he was a member of the Venice Commission on Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe, while from 2001 he was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. He was a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists from 2003, and from 2006 a member of its executive committee. He was also a member and a vice-chairman of the UN Human Rights Committee, and served as an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice.
Dimitrijević was the president of the Yugoslav branch of the International Law Association, and a member of the Anticorruption Council of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. He was one of the founders of the Serbian Forum for International Relations and the Balkan Political Club, and was a member of the Serbian PEN Centre since 1986.

Publications

Professor Dimitrijević was the author, co-author or editor of numerous books in Serbian and English:
He authored or co-authored more than 250 academic articles.

Death

Vojin Dimitrijević died suddenly in Belgrade on 5 October 2012.