Christian De Vos serves as the director of research and investigations, responsible for managing PHR’s research and investigation program areas, overseeing its publications, and developing new areas of work within the organization’s framework of investigating human rights violations, documenting evidence to support accountability processes, and advocating to prevent these crimes.
De Vos has worked as a human rights advocate, attorney, and researcher for organizations including Amnesty International, the United States Institute of Peace, the War Crimes Research Office, and Leiden University’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. Prior to joining PHR, he was a senior advocacy officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, where he worked across the Open Society Foundations’ network to advance a broad range of human rights issues, principally through strategic litigation, research, and legal advocacy. From 2007 to 2009, De Vos served as a law clerk with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
De Vos has published widely in the fields of human rights and international criminal law. He coedited the volume Contested Justice: The Politics and Practice of International Criminal Court Interventions (Cambridge Press, 2015) and his book, Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance: The International Criminal Court in Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Cambridge Press, 2020), won the “Book of the Year” Award from the International Law Association’s American Branch.
De Vos received his JD from the American University Washington College of Law and his PhD from the University of Leiden. He also holds an MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics and a BA from Wesleyan University. De Vos is a board member of the European Implementation Network, an NGO focused on improving state compliance with rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, serves on the editorial board of the American Society of International Law’s Insights series, and is a member of the New York bar. He is also an adjunct assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, where he teaches international human rights law.