In Pursuit of Justice and Accountability in International Law
Professor Charles C. Jalloh joins BU Law as the 2023–24 William and Patricia Kleh Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Law.

In Pursuit of Justice and Accountability in International Law
Professor Charles C. Jalloh joins BU Law as the 2023–24 William and Patricia Kleh Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Law.
Professor Charles C. Jalloh was a teenager when the Sierra Leonean Civil War—an 11-year conflict with devastating humanitarian consequences—forced him to leave his home country for Canada, where he was granted refugee status. The experience motivated him to pursue a career in international law, and eventually, as a professor.
“I was interested in pursuing justice and accountability for those who commit the world’s worst crimes,” Jalloh says. “After several years of legal practice, first in Canada, and then in several international criminal tribunals, in Sierra Leone, the Netherlands, and Tanzania, I thought that becoming a law professor would be a good way to pass on what I learned in practice at the domestic and international levels to the next generation of attorneys.”
Professor Jalloh is a Distinguished University Professor of International Law at Florida International University, South Florida’s public law school; he has joined BU Law for the 2023–24 academic year as the William and Patricia Kleh Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Law. As part of his visitorship at BU Law, he will deliver the annual Kleh Lecture in International Law on November 20 speaking about crimes against humanity.
Jalloh is a twice-elected member of the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC), a body of 34 independent legal experts from around the world tasked with developing and codifying international law for the UN General Assembly. He has served the ILC in several leadership capacities, including as special rapporteur, chair of the drafting committee, general rapporteur, second-vice chair, and chair of the ILC’s standing Working Group on Methods of Work.
“The Commission studies both classical international law questions and pressing issues of concern to the international community,” Jalloh says, noting that the work of the ILC is “based on the premise that, if states can agree on rules of the road that they then each implement, they are less likely to get into conflict with each other, and everyone is better off.”
The ILC’s current work includes examining the legal framework that should apply to rising sea levels due to climate change. Many countries around the world, island nations and the US included, are experiencing loss of territory due to sea level rise, leading to forced displacement among citizens. Other topics include the resurgence of modern piracy and armed robbery at sea, a problem affecting shipping and trade routes, especially off the coasts of Africa and Asia.As part of its role in promoting thinking about international law as a system, the ILC is also studying the role of judicial decisions and scholarly works, as well as those of expert bodies, in the identification and determination of rules of international law—the topic for which Professor Jalloh is the special rapporteur.
International law, whether states comply with it or sometimes ignore it, is the glue that holds peaceful international relations together.
“It has been incredibly rewarding to be at the table with 33 other international lawyers, trained in different legal traditions, using the same language and working toward the same goal of helping clarify and develop international law,” Jalloh says. “International law, whether states comply with it or sometimes ignore it, is the glue that holds peaceful international relations together.”
Beyond his work with the ILC, Jalloh has published widely on various issues in international law, including articles in some of the leading journals in the field and books with academic presses at Cambridge and Oxford University. His monograph assessing the contributions of Special Court for Sierra Leone to the development of international law, which has been one of the most discussed accountability models at the international level including in relation to Ukraine, was the subject of a special book symposium issue of the FIU Law Review.
Jalloh held the prestigious Fulbright-Lund Distinguished Chair in Public International Law at Lund University in Sweden in 2018–19, and in October 2021, he received the Real Triumphs Faculty Award from the FIU President’s Council and the provost and president of the university for sustained excellence in legal research. In October 2022, he was named an FIU Distinguished University Professor, the first law faculty member to receive that recognition, reserved for full professors deemed to be eminent leaders in their fields. He is the founding editor of the African Journal of Legal Studies, and he sits on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed journals, including the American Journal of International Law, the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, and the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law.
Before joining academia, Professor Jalloh practiced law in various countries: as counsel with the Canadian Department of Justice; associate legal officer in Trial Chamber I of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania, working on high profile cases involving the 1994 Rwandan genocide; as the legal adviser/duty counsel in the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown and in The Hague, where he headed the Sub-Office of the Office of the Principal Defender and later served as a visiting professional at the International Criminal Court. He has continued to advise governments and international organizations, like the African Union Commission, on issues of international law, including representing various African states before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, as well an upcoming appearance at the International Court of Justice to advise on matters relating to climate change.
Jalloh’s education includes a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Guelph, Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Civil Law degrees from McGill University in Canada. He also earned a master’s in international human rights law, with distinction, from Oxford University, where he was a Chevening Scholar, and a PhD in international law from the Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
At BU Law, Jalloh is teaching an advanced topics seminar that examines the development of international law at the ILC. In his spare time, he enjoys basketball, soccer, and running, as well as traveling. “I try to combine my running with my travel,” he says, “and whenever I’m in a new city, I try to jog both to get my bearings and to get a better feel for the place. Since arriving in Boston, I’ve tried to do the same, checking out the wonderful trails on the esplanade by the Charles River.”