Surya Prasad Subedi OBE is a Nepalese jurist. He is Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds, a member of the Institut de Droit International, and a barrister in London. He also is a visiting professor on the international human rights law programme of the University of Oxford. He served as the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia for six years (2009-2015). He also served for five years, starting in 2010, on an advisory group on human rights to the British Foreign Secretary. In 2021, he was appointed legal procedural advisor to the World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature held in Marseille, France. He has written a number of works on the theory and practice of international law and human rights and acted as a counsel in a number of cases before the international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice. In 2022, he was appointed to the list of arbitrators under a post-Brexit free-trade treaty between the United Kingdom and the European Union - the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).
Early life and education
Subedi was born in the village of Khudi in the Lamjung District of Nepal, in the foothills of the Himalayas, within the Annapurna mountain range. The medium of instruction in his primary school and lower secondary school was mostly Sanskrit, with some Nepali language instruction. His father, Pandit Hom Nath, was a teacher and his granduncle, Pandit Badri Nath, was the headmaster.
He began his higher education at Tribhuvan University, completing his LLB degree in 1981 and an MA in 1984.
In 1986, as a recipient of the British Council Scholarship (now known as the Chevening Scholarship), he moved to the United Kingdom to study for an LLM (awarded with Distinction in 1988) at the University of Hull. He received the Josephine Onoh Memorial Prize from the University of Hull as best LLM student of the year. Afterwards, Subedi continued his studies at the University of Oxford for a doctorate in law, which he received in 1993. His doctoral thesis won the Dasturzada Pavry Memorial Prize from the University of Oxford.
Career
Law practice in Nepal
Subedi began his career in law as a public prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney-General of Nepal and, after promotion, proceeded to work for the Royal Commission on Judicial Reform and as Under-Secretary in the International Law Office of the Ministry of Law and Justice. He later served as advisor on international legal matters to King Birendra of Nepal and to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For his work, King Birendra decorated Subedi with the Suprabal Gorkhadaxinbahu in 1998.
Academia
Subedi began his academic career as a Lecturer in Law in 1993 at the University of Hull. After promotion, he became a Professor of Law in 1999 at Hull. He moved to the University of Leeds to become Professor of International Law.
Subedi was a co-founder and the founding chairperson of the Britain-Nepal Academic Council in 2000, serving in that capacity for ten years.
He was involved in the establishment of the Asian Society of International Law with its head office at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore, and is Chairman of the Board of Editors of the flagship publication of the Society – the Asian Journal of International Law – published by Cambridge University Press. Prior to this, he was chief editor of the Asian Yearbook of International Law between 1999 and 2006 published by Martinus Nijhoff in The Hague. In addition, he is editor of a series of monographs on 'human rights and international law' published by Routledge (London/New York).
Subedi has been invited to meetings of the Doha Forum in 2006, 2019, when he was the Moderator of a Panel: "Challenges to the International Legal Order and Possibilities for the Future", and 2022.
Subedi was elected to the Institut de Droit International in 2011 and made a Membre Titulaire in 2015. He was a member of the Executive Council of the International Law Association (ILA) between 2014 and 2017.
From 2015 to 2017, Subedi was a member of the Task Force on Investment Policy of the World Economic Forum in Davos and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development in Geneva. As a result of his work on the Task Force, a report was published in 2016, which was then developed in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and led to the conclusion of negotiations on the text of an Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement in July 2023.