Pompeu Fabra University has awarded Philippe Sands an honorary doctorate. Lawyer, expert in international law and writer, Sands is currently one of the most prestigious and experienced internationalist lawyers. He has participated in several international arbitration processes and is one of the academic authorities on issues of international humanitarian and international criminal law. In addition, Philippe Sands has taken major episodes of recent history to the literary field, leading his books such as East West Street and 38 Londres Street to become bestsellers.
Philippe Sands, who received the distinction visibly moved, insisted that we are living at a complex and difficult time in history; but he urged the population to firmly uphold the rights and the principles of peace and coexistence. “We are living in difficult times: wars, genocides, pandemics, climate change...”, said Sands; “but it is at these times of difficultly that people fight and stand firm to uphold their rights”. And, addressing students directly, he urged them to “keep up [their] hope and convictions”. “The university is a place where people are free to express themselves without fear”, said the new honorary doctor. “In 1945, the main world leaders worked together to establish the system of values that has been in force for the last seventy years. It is the leaders of these same countries that are now defying and boycotting international norms and law”, he commented. “International law is not just law between states; it is also the law governing humanity”, he said.
The UPF rector, Laia de Nadal, defined him as a world maître à penser in public international law: “His work has been decisive in strengthening the idea that the international community cannot sit on the fence in the face of barbarity”. Sands has also been a key voice in the legal definition of ecocide as a possible fifth international crime, “another example of his intellectual courage and his ability to get ahead of the debates of the future”. “Philippe Sands has shown that it is possible to be, at the same time, a rigorous jurist, an attentive narrator and an unsettling conscience in times of war, impunity and denial”, the rector added. By distinguishing Sands as an honorary doctor, “UPF reaffirms its commitment to stringent international law, the defence of human rights and an idea of the university as a space of critical memory and global responsibility”.
The professor of Public International Law at UPF, Ángel Rodrigo , was tasked with outlining the figure of Sands. In his laudatio speech, Rodrigo celebrated Sands’ major academic contributions in the field of public international law, especially with regard to environmental protection, humanitarian law and international criminal law. He also recognized his “brilliant career as an international jurist” and his civic commitment through his first-class literary works. “The works of Philippe Sands cross the frontiers of law”, said professor Rodrigo: “In these authoritarian times, words, responses and a commitment to human rights, the rule of law, democracy and international law are important”.
Born in London in 1960, he is a professor of Law and the director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London (UCL). He has also been a doctoral student and a researcher at the University of Cambridge (Lauterpacht Centre for International Law) and a visiting professor at institutions such as Harvard Law School and at universities in Toronto, Melbourne, Lviv and at the Sorbonne, among others.
Specializing in international law, he was one of the first internationalist jurists concerned with environmental protection. He has acted as an advisor and a defender before international courts and tribunals and has actively participated in historical trials such as the trial of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the war of Yugoslavia, the Rwandan genocide, the invasion of Iraq and torture at Guantánamo prison. He has also advised governments and international bodies in cases such as Mauritius’s recovery of the Chagos Islands, the occupation of Palestine before the International Court of Justice, and the recognition of the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
Philippe Sands’ passion for international law and human rights has been reflected on several occasions in his bestsellers that have earned him great recognition, as well as awards, for making complex topics accessible to a wide audience.
He combines essay, narrative, and academic writing. His book East West Street traces the author's family past and reflects on the Holocaust based on the Nuremberg trials. He has been translated into some twenty languages. More recently, in 2025, he published 38 Londres Street , where he explores unexpected links between the dictatorship in Chile, Nazism and colonial history.