Sir Vincent Evans Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Street Michael and Street George Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire was a British diplomat and international lawyer, who served as Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of the United Kingdom from 1980 to 1991.
Background
Evans was born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors" School, Northwood, and Wadham College, Oxford, where he obtained a 1st Class Honours degree in Jurisprudence in 1937 and a Bachelor of Civil Law on a Cassel Scholarship from Lincoln"s Inn in 1938.
Career
He was called to the Bar at Lincoln"s Inn in 1939 but joined the Army that year on the outbreak of the Second World War, becoming a Lieutenant Colonel and appointed Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1945, and was appointed Legal Advisor to the British Administration in Cyrenaica, the eastern coastal region of Libya. Upon leaving the Army, he was appointed Assistant Legal Adviser to the Foreign Office in 1947 and was involved in drafting of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and became Legal Counsellor to the United Kingdom Permanent Mission to the United Nations in 1954. He retired from the Foreign Office in 1975 but remained involved in international legal affairs
He served as the United Kingdom"s Representative to the Council of Europe Steering Committee on Human Rights from 1976 to 1980, and chaired the group in his last year there.
In 1980, he was elected the judge in respect of the United Kingdom at the then non-permanent European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, succeeding Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, also a former Foreign Office lawyer and judge of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. He spent ten years at the Court, taking part in a number of significant judgements including Dudgeon v United Kingdom, and retired in 1991.
Membership
In 1977, he became a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and was its Vice-Chairman from 1979 to 1980. He left the Committee in 1984 and was succeeded by Dame Rosalyn Higgins, who went on to become the first female member of the International Court of Justice, and its President from 2006 to 2009. He was also a Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration from 1987 to 1997.
He was Vice-President of the British Institute of Human Rights from 1992 to 2004, a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex from 1983 to 1994, and a member of the Council of Management of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law from 1969 to 2005.