By Sandra Blessing
Kenya’s Professor Phoebe Okowa has been elected as a judge of the International Court of Justice for a period of nine years.
In a communiqué from the President of the Security Council, President Sanita Pavluta-Deslandes announced the election of the Kenyan don.
It read in part: “I have the honour to inform you that, at the 10,262nd meeting of the Security Council held on 3 November 2026 for the purpose of electing one member of the International Court of Justice for a term of office beginning on 5 February 2027, Okowa, Phoebe N (Kenya) obtained an absolute majority of votes.
Please accept, Excellency, the assurance of my highest consideration.”
Diplomatic Campaign
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertook an intensive diplomatic campaign to secure Okowa’s election to the World Court.
In a significant diplomatic breakthrough just ahead of the voting rounds, Sierra Leone officially withdrew its competing candidate, Professor Charles Chemor Jalloh, and formally threw its backing behind Okowa.
Movement
In November 2025, Okowa was elected to the International Law Commission (ILC).
In a communiqué dated 12 November 2025, addressed to the President of the General Assembly, Ms Annalena Baerbock, from the President of the Security Council, Michael Imran Khan, it read: “I have the honour to inform you that, at the 10,040th meeting of the International Court of Justice to fill the seat that became vacant on 30 September 2025, Ms Phoebe Okowa (Kenya) obtained an absolute majority of votes in the Security Council. Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurance of my highest consideration.”
Okowa was elected after four rounds of voting and was to serve as one of the ICJ’s 15 judges until February 2027.
Milestone
She became the first African woman to secure a seat on the International Law Commission, where she would serve for a considerable period beginning in 2023.
The Commission was established in 1947 and is based in New York, USA. In its 72-year history, the Commission has had only seven women members out of a total membership of 229, with the first woman being elected in 2000.
Achievements
Prof Okowa graduated at the top of her class with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree, First Class Honours, from the University of Nairobi.
She has taught public international law, constitutional law and private international law at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.
Phoebe Okowa is Professor of Public International Law and was Director of Graduate Studies at Queen Mary University of London. She previously taught Public International Law, 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 universities of Lille, Helsinki and Stockholm, and at the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre for Global Constitutionalism. She has also 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. 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. In 2017, she was nominated as an arbiter to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
Okowa graduated at the top of her class with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree with First Class Honours from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. She proceeded to the University of Oxford on a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholarship, obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL). She completed her doctoral thesis (D.Phil.) at Oxford under the supervision of the Chichele Professor of International Law, Ian Brownlie QC. Her monograph on State Responsibility for Transboundary Air Pollution, 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. She has also co-edited Environmental Law and Justice in Context (with Jonas Ebbesson, CUP 2009).
Works
Her work on the admissibility of claims in international adjudication has been cited with approval numerous times by domestic courts considering questions of international law. She is 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).
Professor Okowa has generalist interests in international law. She has written on a wide range of contemporary international law topics, including the interface between state responsibility and individual accountability for international crimes, unilateral and collective responses to the protection of natural resources in conflict zones, and aspects of the protection of the environment.
She serves as Editor of the series Foundations of Public International Law (with Malcolm Evans, Oxford University Press) and is on the editorial board of the African Journal of International and Comparative Law. She was also on the editorial board of the International Community Law Review for ten years.
Her articles have been published in the African Journal of International and Comparative Law, British Yearbook of International Law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly and Current Legal Problems, among others.
Her current research explores the systemic problems of accountability involved in the use and exploitation of natural resources in conflict zones. It focuses on conflicts where coherent and well-organised insurgencies present a credible challenge to governmental power and the state-centric structures of authority in international law. An offshoot of this project examines concession contracts in peace agreements and will be published in the Research Handbook on International Law and Environmental Peacebuilding (Edward Elgar, 2021).
