ICJ Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade (1947-2022)

The International Court of Justice announced the passing of H.E. Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade on 29 May 2022 in Brazil.

Judge Cançado Trindade had been a Member of the International Court of Justice from 6 February 2009. Having been re-elected on 6 February 2018, his latest term of office was due to expire in February 2027.

Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on 17 September 1947. He led an illustrious career in the fields of international law and human rights. After obtaining a Bachelors’s degree in law from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, he pursued his Master’s and PhD in international law at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He later obtained further honorary titles and prizes from various universities across Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

In his home country, he served as Legal Adviser to the Ministry of External Relations of Brazil from 1985 to 1990, and represented Brazil in a number of important regional and international conferences.

Judge Cançado Trindade was a member of the Commission of Advisors to UNESCO on the Right to Peace as a Human Right, a research supervisor for the project on International Humanitarian Law and Customary Law of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and an arbitrator of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

In Latin America, he notably served as a judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 1995 to 2008, having been elected its President from 1999 to 2004. He was also Executive Director of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights from 1994 to 1996.

Judge Cançado Trindade served as a professor and lecturer at a number of renowned universities, academies, and institutes throughout his long career. He authored 78 books and some 790 monographs, contributions to various publications, as well as articles on international law.

He published in numerous countries and several languages. He also held various advisory functions
in international and regional organizations. Judge Cançado Trindade also participated in a number of professional associations and learned societies in different capacities. In particular, he was a member of the Institut de droit international from 1997, and, from 2004, a member of the Curatorium of the Hague Academy of International Law. He was also Director of the Brazilian Journal of International Law from 1985, and Co-Director of the Brazilian Journal of Human Rights from 2001.

(Adapted from an ICJ press release)

(mew)