Christian De Vos is the Director of Research and Investigations at Physicians for Human Rights, where he manages the organization’s research and investigation program areas, oversees its publications, and develops new areas of work documenting human rights violations, advocating for their prevention, and supporting accountability processes.
Prior to joining PHR, De Vos worked as a human rights advocate, attorney, and researcher for organizations including Amnesty International, the United States Institute of Peace, the War Crimes Research Office, and Leiden University’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. From 2013-2021, he was a senior advocacy officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, where he worked across the Open Society Foundations’ network to advance a broad range of human rights issues, principally through strategic litigation, research, and legal advocacy. He also served as a law clerk with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
De Vos has published widely in the fields of human rights and international criminal law. He coedited the volume Contested Justice: The Politics and Practice of International Criminal Court Interventions (Cambridge Press, 2015) and his book, Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance: The International Criminal Court in Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Cambridge Press, 2020), won the “Book of the Year” Award from the International Law Association’s American Branch. He also serves on the Editorial Board of the American Society of International Law’s Insights series.
De Vos received his JD from the American University Washington College of Law and his PhD from the University of Leiden. He also holds an MSc in international relations from the London School of Economics and a BA from Wesleyan University. A member of the New York bar, he teaches international human rights law at Columbia.