The Department of International Law is the part of Law Institute, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) and was founded in 1963. For decades the Department has been internationally renowned for its innovative capacity of exploring legal frontiers and for educating generations of lawyers.

Aslan ABASHIDZE, Professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, Member of the Expert Council on Law of the Higher Attestation Commission under the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation, Member of the Scientific Advisory Council under the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Member of the Expert Council under the Commissioner on Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Chairman of the International Law Commission of the United Nations Association of Russia, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Law, Professor

Faculty of the Department consists of professor, associate professors and senior lecturer. Many of them graduated from famous world universities as University of Amsterdam (A. Solntsev, N. Emelyanova), Harvard University (E. Kiseleva), Lund University (A. Abashidze, E. Kiseleva), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (M. Ilyashevich), European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (A. Koneva). All lecturers are members of different professional associations and communities: International Law Association (ILA), International Institute of Space Law (IISL), European Society of International Law (ESIL), IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, European Environmental Law Forum.

The Department of International Law is realizing bachelor programme “International Law” and three master programmes “Public International Law”, “International Protection of Human Rights” in Russian and English languages. Last programme is supported by Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights and delivered unique courses: International Law: Issues of Migration and Asylum, Discrimination and Gender Issues in International Law, Human Rights Treaty Bodies, Human Rights and Challenges of the XXI Century, International Labor Rights in the Global Economy, Inter-American System of Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Rights Protection, Environmental Protection and Human Rights, The Right to Health in International Law, International Business and Human Rights, African System of Human Rights. The Department also has postgraduate programmes “International Law” both in Russian and in English languages. Each year 5-10 Ph.D. Students are graduated from this programme.

The Department of International Law has published about 3000 articles, handbooks and monographs for the last ten years. The papers were published in in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Great Britain, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Canada, China, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Moldova, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, the USA, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, Croatia, Switzerland, Sweden, South Africa, Yugoslavia, etc.

Every year Department organizes about 100 meeting, seminars, public lectures, symposiums, conferences and one congress. The Annual Blischenko Congress represents a platform for discussing contemporary issues of international law and bears the name of Professor Igor Blischenko, who headed the Department of International Law, RUDN University for 20 years. More than 500 scholars, practitioners, students and Ph.D. students from more than 70 countries, including the representatives of more than 40 regions of Russia, participate in the Congress annually. The Congress is bringing together the heads of departments of international law at leading Russian Universities, foreign and Russian scholars, UN experts and representatives of other international organisations, the representatives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Russian Ministry of Justice, the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Russian Ministry of Education, the Russian Academy of Sciences, non-governmental organisations, mass media and judicial publishing houses.