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About David Tolbert

David Tolbert is the Chair of the Allard Prize Board. Formerly, Mr. Tolbert was the UN Assistant Secretary General for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon from 2020 to 2022. He also served as the President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), a global human rights organization, from 2010 to 2018. In addition to his leadership and managerial responsibilities at ICTJ, Mr. Tolbert worked on a range of human rights and justice issues, including through a wide variety of interventions and publications. Working with a variety of states and civil society groups, he led efforts to support domestic war crimes prosecutions, truth commissions and other accountability processes through high level meetings as well as work in conflict zones, highlighting the role of victims and the issues linking peace and justice. He made important contributions to the ICTJ’s work on the Colombian peace process and its work in Tunisia with the Truth and Dignity Commission as well as a variety of other contexts. Mr. Tolbert also directly led ICTJ’s efforts to address issues of racial injustice in the United States.

Previously, Mr. Tolbert served as registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and assistant secretary-general and special expert to the UN Secretary-General on UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials. From 2004 to 2008, he served as Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) where he had earlier been Deputy Registrar and Chef de Cabinet to the President and represented the ICTY in discussions leading up to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Mr. Tolbert has also served as the Executive Director of the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative and as Chief, General Legal Division of the United Nations Relief Works Agency in Vienna and Gaza. From 2008 to 2009, Mr. Tolbert was Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a member of the American Society of International Law’s Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward the ICC. He taught international law and human rights in the United Kingdom and started his career as a lawyer in the United States. Mr. Tolbert has written extensively on international justice and human rights.