Nils Melzer was appointed as the ICRC’s Director of International Law, Policy and Humanitarian Diplomacy in 2022. He has previously served with the ICRC from 1999 until 2011, both as a delegate in operational contexts and as a legal adviser in Geneva. He has also been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (2016-2022); Senior Security Policy Advisor to the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2015-2016); and Vice-President of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in Sanremo (2019-2022).

An affiliate Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow, he has also held the Swiss Chairs for Human Rights and, respectively, for International Humanitarian Law at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, and has been a Senior Fellow and Programme Advisor for Emerging Security Challenges at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, as well as Research Director at the Centre for Business and Human Rights at the University of Zurich.