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DR. ABDULAI CONTEH IN LINE FOR CHAIRPERSON OF AFRICAN UNION
The Commission of the African Union has announced the names of the candidates for Chairpersons, Deputy Chairpersons and Commissioners for the Union. There are six candidates for the position of Chairperson. Amongst them is the eminent Sierra Leonean jurist and diplomat, Dr. Abdulai Osman Conteh, current Chief Justice of the Caribbean Commonwealth State of Belize.
Dr. Conteh who graduated LLB (Hons.) from Kings College, London University and Kings College, Cambridge, where he was an athletic blue, was at one time a Member of Parliament, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Finance responsible for financial policy, and served on the Interim Committee of the International Monetary Fund, Attorney General and Minister of Justice, and 1st Vice President and Minister of Internal Affairs & Rural Development in the Republic of Sierra Leone. Between 1977 and 1983 he led the Sierra Leone Delegation to the UN General Assembly and on several occasions served as Vice President of the Assembly and Chairman of the OAU Council of Ministers.
His professional skills and expertise include extensive graduate studies in International Law, extensive practical knowledge of law and international affairs, diplomacy and business. He has also had over ten years professional practice of law, both as a private legal practitioner and government lawyer and as an academic, a professor of law at the University of Sierra Leone.
Since January 2002 Dr. Conteh has been Chief Justice of the Caribbean Commonwealth of Belize; where he is in charge of the Judiciary and presides in civil, criminal, constitutional and commercial cases. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Caribbean Court of Justice, Senior Advisor of the World Space Foundation in Washington DC, Senior Political Affairs Officer for UN Transition Administration of East Timor and has acted as consultant on strategy for collaboration between World Space Foundation and the UN Secretariat and UN System.
Dr. Conteh has participated in numerous international conferences such as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) the Non-Aligned Movement, meetings of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union); where he was a prominent member and participated in its committees to resolve the Western Sahara Dispute, the Libya/Chad Dispute and the Ethiopian/Sudan Dispute.
Dr. Abdulai Osman Conteh is an erudite scholar who has written and contributed to several international publications such as African and International Legal Provisions for the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes - Disarment, Vol.22, No 1, Pg 44, Winter, 1988/89, The Protection of Interests of Members and Creditors, Administration Orders and the Insolvency Act 1992 (The Bulletin of The Gambia Branch of the African Society of International and Comparative Law) Issue No.5 December 1994 and the Sierra Leone Constitution 1991 -book of Essays.
To editors
For more information Dr Conteh can be contacted by email on chiefjust@btl.net
By telephone. 501.223.0482 (home)
501.227.4387 (office)
501.227.4375 (fax)
Editor's Note: We wish Dr.Conteh the best of luck so that God can avail him the opportunity to serve Africa in a different capacity. Upon receipt of this release, The Editor of The Gambia Echo called the lawyer- scholar and was able to confirm from him, that in deed, his name has been submitted as a candidate for the African Union Chairmanship. I first encountered Dr. Conteh in The Gambia fifteen years ago when he was in partnership with Fafa Mbai. He was generous enough to sponsor so many Gambian High School students that I profiled in the Point Newspaper but would not want it published. The last person he sponsored before I left The Gambia was a student at the St. Augustine's High School called Ousman from Essau village in the North Bank. When Yahya Jammeh came to power in 1994, he deported Dr. Conteh from The Gambia.