Professor Phoebe Okowa, a Kenyan international law scholar and advocate, has been re-elected as a Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for a full nine-year term, running from 6 February 2027 to 2036. She secured 183 votes in the United Nations General Assembly and 13 in the Security Council during simultaneous voting on 3 November 2026. 

Prof. Okowa initially joined the Court in November 2025 after being elected to fill the casual vacancy left by Somali Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf, whose term was due to end in February 2027. Her re-election secures her a full term on the 15-member Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, and serving as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. 

She is a Professor of Public International Law at Queen Mary University of London, where she joined in 2002 and has also served as Director of Graduate Studies. Before joining the ICJ, she was a member of the United Nations International Law Commission, elected in 2021 for a five-year term beginning in January 2023. She was the first African woman elected to the Commission. 

Her international legal experience also includes membership of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, to which she was appointed in 2016, and of the Legal Committee of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law. She has advised governments and non-governmental organisations on international law and has participated in proceedings before domestic and international courts, including the ICJ. 

Prof. Okowa began her legal education at the University of Nairobi, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours in 1987. She subsequently obtained a Bachelor of Civil Law from the University of Oxford in 1990 and completed her Doctor of Philosophy in International Law at Oxford in 1994. She is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. 

Her academic contributions include publications on state responsibility, environmental law, international dispute settlement, and the legal implications of natural resource exploitation in conflict zones. In 2024, she received an honorary doctorate in law from Stockholm University.