WALTER KÄLIN

Professor Emeritus, University of Bern / Envoy of the Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement

Walter Kälin is Professor Emeritus for international and (Swiss) constitutional law at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

He is the present envoy of the Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement and former Envoy of the Chairmanship of the Nansen Initiative on disaster-induced cross-border displacement. 

He served as Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee, as Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Commission on the situation of human rights in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, and as a member of the Expert Advisory Group to the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement.

He contributes to the EIHRSDS intensive course with a session on the “Protection of internally displaced persons in disaster settings”.

Selected Publications

W Kälin, Internal Displacement and the Law, Oxford University Press, forthcoming (estimated May 2023)

W Kälin, Protection of victims of disasters: the vertical dimension of the Draft Articles on the protection of persons in the events of disasters, Yearbook of International Disaster Law, 2018

W. Kälin and Hannah Entwisle Chapuisat, Displacement in the context of disasters and adverse effects of climate change, in: Susan Breau and Katja Samuel (eds), Research Handbook on Disasters and International Law, Edward Elgar, 2016

W Kälin, The Human Rights Dimension of Natural or Human-Made Disasters, German Yearbook of International Law, 2012