Education
University of Oslo.
University of Oslo.
Eide is one of Norway"s foremost experts on human rights. As a researcher and specialist, he has been particularly concerned with indigenous and minority issues, and he has held important assignments in these fields both in Norway and in the United Nations system. He was Director of the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo, and from 1971 to 1975, Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association.
This was the first official international forum where the indigenous peoples" own representatives were given the opportunity to present their requests and demands.
The work has been of great importance for the further development of indigenous law. After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was an outbreak of many serious ethnic conflicts, and Eide prepared a study for the Commission on "peaceful and constructive ways" to address minority situations.
This study led the United Nations to initiate a new working group for the protection of minorities, and Eide was chair of this United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Minorities (1995—2004). Eide has also published a large number of articles and books, alone or together with Nordic and international colleagues in the fields of peace research and international human rights.
In 1981 Eide was elected member of the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (United Nations Sub-Commission on Human Rights, 1981—2003), where he has been re-elected several times as the only Nordic member, and has been responsible for developing a number of studies of this sub-committee. As a member of the Commission Eide took initiative to establish a working group of the United Nations for indigenous issues, and became its first chairman from (1982-1983).