Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is the Chair of Shift’s Board of Trustees.
Prince Zeid is the President & CEO of the International Peace Institute (IPI) and the Perry World House Professor of Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018. He is a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working together for peace, justice and human rights, first established by Nelson Mandela in 2007.
Prince Zeid has previously held several diplomatic posts including as Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York and Ambassador to the United States of America. In 2014, he was President of the UN Security Council and chaired the Security Council’s committees on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia. He also served as a UN political affairs officer in the former Yugoslavia, from 1994 to 1996.
Prince Zeid is globally respected for his integrity, ethical leadership, and commitment to human rights. His professional experience demonstrates his long familiarity with international criminal justice, international law, UN peacekeeping, post-conflict peace-building, and international development.
An expert in the field of international justice, Prince Zeid was a central figure in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), chairing the complex negotiations to establish the exact terms of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He was subsequently elected the first President of the governing body of the ICC in 2002 and grew it into the internationally recognized court that it is today.
Recognized as a leading defender of universal human rights, Prince Zeid was given the Stockholm Human Rights Award in 2015, the Human Rights Tulip prize in 2018, and Foreign Policy magazine named him Diplomat of the Year.
