Phoebe Okowa


Phoebe Nyawade Okowa is a Kenyan lawyer and Professor of Public International Law and Director of Graduate Studies at Queen Mary University of London. She has served as a judge of the International Court of Justice since November 2025.
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 2016, she was appointed by Kenya to be a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague from 2017 to 2022. In 2021, she was elected as a member of the Law Commission from 2023 to 2027.

Early life and education

Okowa was born in Kericho on 1 January 1965 to Luo parents. She graduated at the top of her class with a Bachelor of Law with First Class Honours from the University of Nairobi, Kenya in 1987. Okowa was the first woman to be awarded a first-class honours degree in the history of the Faculty of Law of the University of Nairobi. She was called to the Kenyan Bar as an Advocate in 1990.
Okowa then studied at Wadham College, Oxford on a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholarship, obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law in 1990. She completed her doctoral thesis at Oxford in 1994 under the supervision of Professor Sir Ian Brownlie, the Chichele Professor of International Law. 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.

Academic career

Okowa taught Public International Law, British 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 University of Lille, University of Helsinki, Stockholm University and WZB Berlin Social Science Center for Global Constitutionalism and has 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.
Okowa is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the African Yearbook of International and Comparative Law and of the Advisory Board of the African Association of International Law. She is a member of The Society of Legal Scholars.
Okowa sits on the International Advisory Board of the Stockholm Centre for International Law and the Executive Committee of the International Society of Public Law.
Okowa was appointed by Princeton University's Center for Human Values as a Fellow in Law and Normative Thinking for 2024-25.
Okowa was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Law by the University of Stockholm in 2024.

Legal career

Okowa has acted as counsel and consultant to governments and non-governmental organisations on questions of international law before domestic and international courts including before the International Court of Justice, involving cases concerning the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, maritime delimitations, the Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, Legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem, Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change, Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Right to Strike under ILO Convention No. 87, and before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law.
In 2016, she was appointed a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague by Kenya.
The government of Kenya nominated Okowa for election to the UN International Law Commission in May 2021. She was co-nominated by the United Kingdom and endorsed by the African Union. Okowa received 162 votes in the United Nations General Assembly, becoming the first African woman elected to serve as an ILC member for a period of five years, effective January 1, 2023. She was appointed the Chair of the ILC's Drafting Committee for its Seventy-fifth Session.
Okowa was elected an Associate of the Institute of International Law at its 2025 Session in Rabat, Morocco.
In 2025, Okowa was co-nominated by Colombia, Kenya, Namibia, the Netherlands, Romania, South Africa, Sweden and Vanuatu for election as a Judge to the International Court of Justice to fill the vacancy on the Court due to the resignation of Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf. On November 12, 2025, after three rounds of voting, she received eight votes in the United Nations Security Council and 106 in the United Nations General Assembly and, therefore having received a majority of votes in each body, was elected as a Judge of the ICJ, with effect from that day, until February 5, 2027, being the remainder of the term of Judge Yusuf.

Selected publications

Books

  • State Responsibility for Transboundary Air Pollution in International Law
  • Environmental Law and Justice in Context, Phoebe Okowa and Jonas Ebbesson

Journal articles

  • ‘The Pitfalls of Unilateral Legislation in International Law: Two Case Studies’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 69, Issue 3 pp. 685–717
  • ‘Sovereignty Contests and the Exploitation of Natural Resources in Conflict Zones’, Current Legal Problems, Vol. 66, Issue 1 pp. 33–73
  • ‘The International Court of Justice and the Georgia/Russia Dispute’, Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 11, Issue 4 pp. 739–757
  • ‘State and Individual Criminal Responsibility in Internal Conflicts: Contours of an Evolving Relationship’, Finnish Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 20 pp. 143–188
  • ‘Case Concerning Ahmadou Sadio Diallo ’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 57, Issue 1 pp. 219–224
  • ‘Congo’s War: The Legal Dimension of a Protracted Conflict’, British Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 77, Issue 1 pp. 203–255
  • ‘Case Concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 55, Issue 3 pp. 742–753
  • ‘Procedural Obligations in International Environmental Agreements’, British Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 67, Issue 1 pp. 275–336
  • ‘The EC and International Environmental Agreements’, Yearbook of European Law, Vol. 15, Issue 1 pp. 169–192

Chapters in books

  • ‘Atmospheric Pollution in International Law’, in Lavanya Rajamani and Jacqueline Peel, Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law pp. 475–491
  • ‘Principle 18: Notification and Assistance in Case of Emergency’, in Jorge E. Viñuales, The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development: A Commentary pp. 471–492
  • ‘The International Court and the Legacy of the Barcelona Traction Case’, in Charles Jalloh and Olufemi Elias, Shielding Humanity: Essays in International Law in Honour of Judge Abdul Koroma pp. 104–132
  • ‘The Security Council, the African Union and the International Criminal Court: Anatomy of a Problematic Relationship’, in Jonas Ebbesson, Marie Jacobsson et al., International Law and Changing Perceptions of Security: Liber Amicorum Said Mahmoudi pp. 228–234
  • ‘Interpreting Constitutive Instruments of International Criminal Tribunals: Reflections on the Special Court for Sierra Leone’, in Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Olufemi Elias and Panos Merkouris, Treaty Interpretation and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: 30 Years On pp. 333–355
  • ‘Issues of Admissibility and the Law on International Responsibility’, in Malcolm Evans, International Law pp. 472–503
  • ‘Environmental Justice in Situations of Armed Conflict’, in Phoebe Okowa and Jonas Ebbesson, Environmental Law and Justice in Context pp. 231–252
  • ‘The Settlement of International Environmental Disputes: A Re-appraisal’, in Malcolm Evans, Remedies in International Law: The Institutional Dilemma pp. 157–172