Filip Reyntjens (born 1952) is professor emeritus at

University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp () is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UAntwerp''. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 students, which makes it the third-largest university in Flanders. ...

. His academic training is in

constitutional law Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a state, namely, the executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as the basic rights of citizens and, in ...

, but he later pivoted towards the study of politics especially of the

Great Lakes region The Great Lakes region of Northern America is a binational Canadian– American region centered on the Great Lakes that includes the U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and the Ca ...

of Africa.

Career

In 1975, while working as a research assistant at the

, Reyntjens was asked to be involved in a project that involved running a law school at the

National University of Rwanda The National University of Rwanda (NUR; , , UNR) was the largest university in Rwanda. It was located at in the city of Butare and was established in 1963 by the government in cooperation with the Congregation of the Dominicans from the Provin ...

, in

Butare Butare (), also known as Huye and formerly known as Astrida, is a city with a population of 62,823 (2022 census) in the Southern Province of Rwanda and the capital of Huye district. It is the seventh largest town in Rwanda by population. Histo ...

. This began a long affiliation with Rwanda. His PhD Thesis: 'Power and Law in Rwanda. Public Law and Political Evolution, 1916-1973' (Original French: ''Pouvoir et droit au Rwanda. Droit public et évolution politique, 1916-1973)'', was completed in 1983, and later published as a book in 1985. After this, his research widened from Rwanda to the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

Region as a whole - publishing work on Burundi and on the Democratic Republic of Congo. Outside of academia, Reyntjens has been called as an

expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

in cases relating to the Great Lakes region in the courts of multiple nations, as well as before the

International Criminal Court The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and International court, international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute ...

and the

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR; ; ) was an international court, international ''ad-hoc'' court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in United Nations Security Council Resolution 955, Resolutio ...

. He has also volunteered for

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

Selected works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reyntjens, Filip 1952 births Living people Academic staff of the University of Antwerp Scholars of constitutional law Historians of Rwanda Historians of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Belgian Africanists