Prof Steven Haines
Prof Steven Haines
Steven Haines has been Professor of Public International Law in the University of Greenwich (London) since 2012, prior to which he was based in the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (2008-12) and taught IHL Weapons Law in the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. From 2003 to 2008 he was Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway College and Professor of Strategy and the Law of Military Operations in the University of London.
Before becoming a full-time academic in 2003. He had served in the UK’s Royal Navy for over thirty years, joining in 1971 as a Warfare/Executive Officer. He served at sea in the North and South Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Mediterranean, Baltic, Caribbean, Red and South China Seas, as well as in UK Home waters. Operationally, he served on UN Economic Embargo Operations off Mozambique in 1973, on maritime counter-terrorism operations in Northern Ireland (1977-81 – including as Head of Naval Operations in the Belfast HQ, from 1979), and was a British Sea Fisheries Officer from 1988-91. In 2001 he deployed on joint staffs, to NATO’s KFOR in Pristina, Kosovo and to the UK’s Joint Task Force HQ in Freetown, towards the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone. His final years in service were spent in Ministry of Defence appointments, in which roles he was the lead author and Editor of British Maritime Doctrine (1999), the author of the Strategic Doctrine for the UK Armed Forces (British Defence Doctrine, 2001) and Chaired the Editorial Board of the UK’s official Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2004). He transferred as a Commander to the Retired List in 2003, prior to taking up his academic career.
As an academic, he retains his interest in IHL/LOAC and focuses on ocean governance, maritime security and international human rights law. A Trustee of the UK-based NGO Human Rights at Sea, he led on the drafting of the Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at Sea, and is currently advocating for its endorsement at state level. He is a member of the International Law Association’s Committee on Protecting People at Sea, the Commonwealth Lawyers Association’s Committee on Human Rights and the Rule of Law, and a member of the Expert Panel for the UN’s Division of Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea.
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