De Zayas grew up in Chicago and earned his juris doctor from Harvard Law School and a doctorate of philosophy in modern history from the Georg-August University of Göttingen. He practiced corporate law in New York and family law in Florida, as member of the New York and Florida Bars. He was also a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tübingen and research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. In 1978-80, he participated in the German-American Schoolbook Commission at the Georg Eckert Institut in Braunschweig and in 1980 published a long article on the subject of prejudice and stereotypes in schoolbooks in "Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte".

During the course of his legal and academic career, he has been a visiting professor of international law and of world history at a number of institutions, including the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), the DePaul University College of Law (Chicago), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, the Schiller International University (Leysin), the Académie Internationale de Droit Constitutionnel (Tunis), the University of Trier, the Santa Clara Law School, the Center for Applied Studies in International Negotiations (CASIN, Genève), the Institut de Droits de l'Homme Strasbourg, the Felix Ermacora Institute in Vienna, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund (Sweden), the Irish National University (Galway) and the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). He has been member of doctoral commissions at Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, the universities of Amsterdam, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), the International Humanitarian Law Institute (San Remo) and the Geneva School of Diplomacy.

De Zayas regularly publishes op-ed articles and essays in German and Swiss newspapers, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Die Welt, Das Parlament, Der Spiegel, Bayernkurier, Zeit Fragen, Le Temps and the Tribune de Genève. He has made television appearances on round tables and panels for CNN, WDR, WDR's Monitor, WDR's "Alte und neue Heimat", Phoenix, 3sat, ZDF, ZDF-Magazin, Südwestfunk/Baden-Baden, "Report", Aschaffenburger Gespräche, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Léman Bleu (Geneva) etc. He has been legal and historical consultant to numerous television documentaries in the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany, including the Discovery Channel film on the sinking of the refugee ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", and the Bayerischer Rundfunk documentary "Flucht und Vertreibung". He regularly gives radio interviews to Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Welle, Radio Cité (Geneva), WBAI (New York), and other stations.

De Zayas is a Roman Catholic and resides with his Dutch wife in Geneva.

According to press articles, he has been a registered Republican in the United States since 1968, when he was a Harvard student and active member of the Harvard Republicans, but has voted for the Democratic party since 2004.

While de Zayas' human rights publications largely reflect United Nations positions, his historical research and conclusions regarding the Ethnic Cleansing of Germans from their native Land in East Germany and Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, a topic that had been hitherto largely neglected by academics, have given rise to much controversy Miskolc Journal of International Law. In 1975, he published a seminal study in the Harvard International Law Journal in which he questioned the legality of the expulsion of possibly as many as 15 million Germans from their homes after World War II, invoking the Atlantic Charter, the Hague Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles. The article was followed by the book Nemesis at Potsdam which focused on the degree of responsibility of the Anglo-Americans for decisions leading to the expulsions of these ethnic Germans. U.S. Ambassador and Eisenhower advisor Robert Murphy wrote the preface. In the same year, an enlarged German edition was published by the foremost legal publisher in Germany, C.H. Beck, becoming a bestseller, and was quickly reissued by Germany's largest pocketbook publisher, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. In this book, de Zayas took an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of population transfers and examined the situation of the ethnic Germans from both a historical and legal perspective. De Zayas was the first American historian to address this topic. As law professor at DePaul in Chicago, he organized an exhibit entitled "Ethnic Cleansing 1944-1948", which ran from November 1993 to February 1994, consisting of more than 100 poster-sized Wochenschau, Bundesarchiv and US-Army Signal Corps pictures, as well as paintings by survivors of the expulsion, which was widely visited and commented in the Chicago press.

His second book, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau was published in Germany by Universitas/Langen Müller. Professor Howard Levie, a noted expert in international humanitarian law, wrote the preface. This book describes some of the work of the Wehrmacht-Untersuchungsstelle, a special section of the legal department of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, which investigated Allied and German war crimes. Examples include the murder of Ukrainians in Lviv by the NKVD in 1941, the murder of Polish prisoners of war at Katyn in 1940, executions of German PoWs by French irregulars in 1944, and the sinking of the German hospital ship "Tübingen" by the British in 1944. De Zayas was the first researcher to see and evaluate the extant 226 volumes (only about half of the total records, the rest apparently having been burned in Langensalza, Germany near the end of the war, according to de Zayas.), which had been classified documents in the United States and had just been returned by the US National Archives to the German Bundesarchiv. The book was savagely attacked in the media of the Soviet Union and its satellites. Notwithstanding criticism from a few historians in Germany, Nemesis at Potsdam and The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau were well-received in the academic community, are used in colleges and universities, and remain in print thirty years after their initial publication, in the 14th and 7th revised and updated editions, respectively.The book on the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau was the product of a 4-year project financed by the Institute of International Law of the University of Göttingen and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany's foremost quasi-official academic foundation. The final report is available online

De Zayas was co-President with Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre of the Association Suisses et Internationaux de Genève (1996—2006). ASIG was particularly active in the cultural integration of international civil servants into Geneva life, an activity currently carried out by the "Geneva Welcome Centre" at the Villa la Pastorale in Geneva. It also organized numerous round tables at the United Nations and other public events with a view to promoting Switzerland's entry into the United Nations. On 11 November 1998 ASIG hosted a conference at the Palais des Nations on "Denis de Rougement ou l'art de penser en avant les problèmes". On 12 May 1999 ASIG hosted a conference by Professor Peter Tschopp, Director of the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, on "La Suisse et l'ONU" at the Centre d'Accueil Genève Inernationale. ASIG also hosted round tables at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Palais Wilson 2000-2002

Activist for human rights and peace

De Zayas is a member of numerous professional organizations and non-governmental organizations, including Amnesty International, Point Coeur, the Geneva Club de la Presse, the German Society for International Law, the Forschungskreis Vereinte Nationen, and the Centre Against Expulsions (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen), the Spanish Society for International Human Rights Law. He sits on the advisory boards of several organizations, including the Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte in Frankfurt, and is a member of the International Expert Panel for a European Solution in Cyprus (2004—2008). In January 2008, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights placed his name on the public list of candidates for Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council

He is currently president of Millennium Solidarity, a Geneva non-governmental organization working for world peace and the eradication of poverty . He has participated on podium discussions at the UN and chaired an expert panel on peace, disarmament and powerty at the Civil Society Development Forum on 28 June 2007 in Geneva. CONGO - Welcome Millennium Solidarity has synergies with the Geneva Institute for Peace Geneva International Peace Research Institute | BIENVENUE ! | ACCUEIL - SOMMAIRE, CETIM -Centre Europe- Tier Monde Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) ... Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) CSP - Manifestations: 09 juin 2005 à 11 h.30 § Civil Society Development Forum 2007 Diva International.“Life motivations in Geneva - A new international centre for life management skills and well-being”

He is a member of the Asociación Española para el Desarrollo del Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos (AEDIDH), which in October 2006 produced the "Luarca Declaration on the Human Right to Peace". He has represented AEDIDH, the International P.E.N., and the International Society for Human Rights at round tables at the United Nations in Geneva. including with Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Professor Jean Ziegler, with the Chairman of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Luis de Alba, and with the President of the General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto. He is an advocate of the human right to peace and a signatory of the "Luarca Declaration on the Human Right to Peace" . He contributed to a book on the Human Right to Peace and presented it at a symposium at the University of California at Berkeley in November 2009.. On 15—16 December 2009 he participated as an expert in the UN workshop on the human right to peace established under Human Rights Council Resolution 11/4. On 22—25 February 2010 he participated at a UNESCO expert meeting in Bilbao, Spain, as a member of the editorial committee of the Declaracion de Bilbao on the Human Right to Peace, for which he served as English-language Rapporteur, and reported on the respults of the workshop at a UN Panel in Geneva in March 2010..

While at the U.N., de Zayas was the founder and editor of the series "Selected Decisions of the Human Rights Committee under the Optional Protocol." He is a regular participant in panels and round tables at the United Nations, where he represents the International Society for Human Rights. During the 4th-10th sessions of the Human Rights Council, he has participated in panels on various issues including the right to development, extreme poverty, the millennium development goals, Kashmir , moderated a panel on human dignity, and presented the statement of Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the International Day of Human Rights, 21 September 2007.. He is a consultant with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and a member of the board of directors of Project 2048 at the University of Berkeley, which aims at a new human rights convention with effective implementation machinery to promote and protect all human rights, including the "new enabling rights" such as the right to peace, the right to truth, the right to a homeland .

In June 2009 de Zayas published, together with Justice Jakob Th.Möller (Iceland) a handbook "The Case-Law of the United Nations Human Rights Committee 1977-2008". The first Chairperson of the Committee, Andreas Mavrommatis, wrote the preface and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan, reviewed it in the UN Special of June 2009, pp. 18—19: "It is staggering how much the Human Rights Committee has influenced the human rights jurisprudence of the world, as is striking from reading this exceedingly important book.... From the outset of its work in 1977 there have been two Secretariat pioneers in developing the case law of the Committee when it considers petitions from individuals claiming violations of their rights: Jakob Möller (Iceland) and Alfred de Zayas (USA). Möller was the first Chief of the Petitions branch of what is today the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and de Zayas was his colleague, who eventually succeeded him as Chief. ...Every lawyer, every judge, every public-spirited citizen will want to consult this fascinating book, because it tells us what is legally right and legally wrong, how to judge our governments, our societies, our United Nations and ourselves."

De Zayas has published poetry in English, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch, translated Rainer Maria Rilke into English, French, and Spanish, translated Joseph von Eichendorff and Hermann Hesse into English.

As a member of the International Rainer Maria Rilke Society (Sierre, Switzerland), he published the first English-language translation of Rilke's "Larenopfer", 90 poems dedicated to Rilke's homeland of Bohemia, and hometown of Prague (with a historical commentary, Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005, second revised and enlarged edition 2008 with a preface by Professor Ralph Freedman; The new book of George C. Schoolfield "Young Rilke and his Time", Camden House 2009, refers favourably to de Zayas' pioneering translation). With this book, de Zayas opened a new facet of Rilke research: Rilke as Heimatdichter or poet of the homeland, poète du terroir - spanning Rilke's early poetry characterized by enthusiasm for the beauties and the history of his homeland through Rilke's final poetic testament – more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to the Valais in Switzerland (Quatrains Valaisains, Roses, Fenetres, Vergers), Rilke's "Wahlheimat", where he spent the last years of his life at the Château de Muzot in Sierre and where he is buried in nearby Raron. Hitherto, Rilke had been understood primarily as a metaphyscial poet, as a poet's poet, but never seen as a homeland poet. Zayas has lectured and published on Rilke's search for a sense of belonging and his grateful attachment to a landscape and to the real people who live there.

He has also published in the literary journal of the PEN Club Suisse romande "L'Escarpe" (renamed 2008 "Pages Littéraires) in 2007 and 2008. A member of International PEN since 1989, he was secretary of the Centre Swiss romand of PEN PEN Club in 2002-06, and is currently its president. De Zayas has been coordinator of the three Swiss PEN Centres Switzerland since 2008.

De Zayas served for 15 years as president of the United Nations Society of Writers (Geneva).De Zayas was the founder of the UN literary review Ex Tempore ISSN 1020-6604, which has published 20 issues Diva International.Chez Alfred de Zayas - fête de la " Genève internationale ".. In September 2009 he was reelected editor-in-chief of Ex Tempore. On 23 January 2009 the 13th annual Ex Tempore salon was held in Geneva . On 22 January 2010 the 14th annual Ex Tempore salon was held in Geneva with the participation of 73 authors and listeners. In honour of the Whistler Olympics de Zayas read out his poem Skiing, also published in the February 2010 UN Special .

De Zayas received the "Ehrengabe zum Georg Dehio Preis" in Esslingen in 1980, the Human Rights Award of the Danube Swabian Society of the United States and Canada in 1985, the VDA-Kulturpreis in Weimar in 1996, the "Plakete für Verdienste für das Selbstbestimmungsrecht" in Berlin in 1997, the "Humanitas Ring" in Frankfurt a.M. in 1998, the"Dr. Walter-Eckhardt-Ehrengabe für Zeitgeschichtsforschung" ("Dr. Walter Eckhardt Award for Contemporary History") from Ingolstadt Research Institute for Contemporary History in 2001, the East Prussian Cultural Prize in Leipzig in 2002, the ANC Scholarly Excellence Award in Los Angeles in 2003, a Menschenrechtspreis in Munich in 2004, and on 10 December 2007 the Menschenrechtspreis of the Volksgruppe der Donauschwaben e.V. in Stuttgart. On 26 July 2008 de Zayas was awarded the Kulturpreis of the city of Geislingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) for his Rilke and Hesse translations. .

Books

• The Genocide against the Armenians and the relevance of the 1948 Genocide Convention, Beirut, Lebanon: Haigazian University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-9953-475-15-8.
• The United Nations Human Rights Committee Case Law 1977-2008 (together with Jakob Th. Möller), N.P.Engel Publishers, Kehl/Strasbourg, 2009, ISBN 978-3-88357-144-7.
• 50 Thesen zur Vertreibung London/München: Verlag Inspiration, 2008. ISBN 978-3-9812110-0-9.
• Rainer Maria Rilke. Die Larenopfer Bilingual English-German edition with commentary. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2005. ISBN 1-59709-010-7; second revised edition with a preface by Ralph Freedman, 2008.
• International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms (with Gudmundur Alfredsson and Bertrand Ramcharan). The Hague: Kluwer, 2001. ISBN 90-411-1445-9. New revised edition, Brill 2009, ISBN 978 90 04 16236 5.
• Heimatrecht ist MenschenrechtUniversitas Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-8004-1416-3
• Human Rights in the Administration of Criminal Justice (with Cherif Bassiouni), New York, Transnational Press: 1994. ISBN 0-941320-87-1
• Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East. 7th ed. Rockland, Maine: Picton Press, 2003. ISBN 0-89725-360-4. 14. revised German edition Die Nemesis von Potsdam, Herbig, Munich 2005.
• A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, ISBN 1-4039-7308-3; second revised edition, Palgrave/Macmillan, New York 2006.
• The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945 (with Walter Rabus). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989, ISBN 0-8032-9908-7. New revised edition with Picton Press, Rockland, Maine, ISBN 0-89725-421-X. German edition: Die Wehrmacht Untersuchungsstelle, 7th revised and enlarged edition Universitas/Langen Müller, Munich 2001.

Articles and chapters

• 4 entries in Dinah Shelton (ed.) Encyclopedia of Genocide. Macmillan Reference, 2005, "Aggression", "Ismael Enver", "Nelson Mandela", "Raoul Wallenberg".
• 6 entries in David Forsythe, Encyclopedia of Human Rights (Oxford 2009): P.E.N. International and Human Rights, Jose Ayala Lasso, Aryeh Nyer, Kenneth Roth, Simon Wiesenthal and Bertrand Ramcharan, ISBN 9780195334029.
• 18 entries in the Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, edited by Rudolf Bernhardt, Amsterdam: Elsevier, Vol. 1-5, 1992—2003, including "United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights", "Combatants", "Spanish Civil War", "Population Expulsion", "Repatriation", "Open Towns", "Curzon Line", "United States Dependent Territories", "European Recovery Program", etc.
• " ISSN 1616-8828.
• "Ethnic Cleansing: Applicable Norms, Emerging Jurisprudence, Implementable Remedies" in John Carey (ed.) International Humanitarian Law: Origins, New York: Transnational Press, 2003, pp. 283—307.
• "The Follow-up Procedure of the UN Human Rights Committee" in International Commission of Jurists Review, no. 47, 1991.
• "The Illegal Implantation of Turkish Settlers in Occupied Northern Cyprus" in Gilbert Gornig (ed.), Iustitia et Pax, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2008, pp. 721—731.
• "The Istanbul Pogrom of 6—7 September 1955 in the Light of International Law" in Genocide Studies and Prevention, vol. 2, no. 2 (August 2007) pp. 137—155.
• "Karl Ernst Smidt" in Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland, Aurich, 2007.
• "" in Tilman Zülch (ed.) "Ethnische Säuberung-Völkermord", Hamburg: Luchterhand, 1993.
• "Minority Rights in the New Millennium" in The Geneva Post Quarterly, May 2007, pp. 155—208.
• "Normes morales et normes juridiques. Concurrence ou conciliation" in Anne Sophie Millet-Devalle (ed.), Religions et Droit International Humanitaire, Paris: Editions Pedone, 2007, pp. 81—87.
• "" in Alexander Demandt "", Munich: C.H.Beck, 1996.
• "The potential for US ratification and enforcement of the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights". Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol. 20, 1990. pp. 299—310.
• "The Procedures and Case-Law of the United Nations Human Rights Committee" in Carlos Jiménez Piernas, The Legal Practice in International Law and European Community Law, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007.
• "The Right to One's Homeland, Ethnic Cleansing and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia", Criminal Law Forum, 1995, pp. 257—314.
• "The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights" in Helmut Volger (ed.) Concise Encyclopaedia of the United Nations, The Hague: Kluwer, 2002, 2nd revised edition 2009.

Other

• editor of the United Nations series "Human Rights Committee. Selected Decisions under the Optional Protocol" CCPR/C/OP/1, CCPR/C/OP/2, etc.
• Poetry in English, French, Spanish, German and Russian published in various literary journals and newspapers including "Esoteric" in 2003, 2004 and 2005 (literary journal of the University of British Columbia), in "Ex Tempore" (literary journal of the United Nations Society of Writers), in les Pages Litteraires (literary journal of P.E.N. International, Centre Suisse romand), in the U.N. Special, Reflections (United Nations Staff Council, New York), in "Paloma", publication of the Geneva Salève Society, etc.