Dr. Kamal Hossain, a well known personality was born on 20 April, 1937. He has been a reputed lawyer both at home and abroad. He did his BA (Economics) from University of Notre Dame, Indiana in 1955, and BA (Honours in Jurisprudence) 1957, Bachelor of Civil Law, (1958) and Doctor of Philosophy (International Law) 1964, all from University of Oxford. He was enrolled as a Barrister from Lincoln’s Inn in 1959 and as an Advocate in the High Court at Dhaka in the same year. He is a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh.

Dr. Kamal Hossain taught Constitutional law and International Law at Queen’s College, Oxford (1957-1959). He was a Research Student (1958-1959, 1964) and Research Fellow (1977-1979) of Nuffield College, Oxford and a Visiting Fellow (1976-1977) of All Souls College, Oxford. He taught International Law and Constitutional law in the University of Dhaka (1962-1967). He was a Visiting Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam,1997.

He was Minister of Law, Government of Bangladesh (1972-73), Minister of Petroleum and Minerals, 1973-75, Minister of Foreign  Affairs from 1973-75.

He led the Bangladesh delegation to the UNGA, 1974. He also led the Bangladesh delegation to the Geneva Session of UN Conference on the Law of The Sea in 1975. As Foreign Minister he was member of the delegation of Bangladesh at the Commonwealth Summits in Ottawa, 1973, and Kingston, 1975; to the Non-Aligned Summit, Algiers, 1973, Islamic Summit, Lahore, 1974. He also led the delegation to the Foreign Minister’s Conference, Organization of Islamic States in Kuala Lumpur (1974) and in Jeddah (1975).  Dr. Hossain was a member of the UN Compensation Commission for two terms (1994 to 1996) and (1999 to 2005), and was Chair of two of its Panels. He was also the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Afghanistan from 1999-2003.

During his long career of over fifty years in the legal profession, Dr. Kamal Hossain has been consultant on International Law to Coward Chance/Clifford Chance (1977 to 2001) has been a member, Panel of Arbitrators, ICSID and served as Chair and Member of a number of international arbitral tribunals (ICC, ICSID, and UNCITRAL). He was appointed as a Judge ad hoc by Malaysia in the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, in the case of Malaysia v Singapore (2003) and a Member of International Law of the Sea Annex VII Tribunal in that case and also in the case of Guyana v Suriname (2005-2007).

Dr. Hossain’s publications include: Law and Policy in Petroleum Development (1979, London and New York) and scholarly papers in: Development of Offshore Oil & Gas (1990, London), Sustainable Development and Good Governance (1995, Leiden); Liber Amicorum for Gunther Jaenicke (1998, Berlin/New York); and Reflections on International Law from the Low Countries (In honour of Paul de Waart) (1998, Dordrecht/London), The Future of International Human Rights, (1999, New York). Articles published in law journals include: “State Succession, the Commonwealth and International Law”, British Yearbook of International Law (1961); “The Dispute That Never Was”, Kamal Hossain (with Jeremy Carver), ICSID Review, Foreign Investment Law Journal, 1990, Vol-5, Issue 2, page 311.

Dr Kamal is a Vice Chairman of the International Law Association, Chairman of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) and South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS), Honorary Fellow, Institute of Mineral and Petroleum Law, University, Dundee, and Member, Advisory Council, Transparency International.