COL (ret) Chris De Cock
COL (ret) Chris De Cock
Colonel (Ret) Chris De Cock is Professor of Law at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the University of Ghent (U Ghent) in the fields of respectively ‘Globalization and international law: capita selecta’ and ‘Law of armed conflict’.
He obtained master’s degrees in the fields of Aeronautical and Military Sciences, Law, Political Sciences, Public Management and Administration, Security and Defense, and International Relations and Diplomacy. After graduating from the Belgian Royal Military Academy, he served in the Belgian Air Force as Platoon and Company Commander for the Force Protection Units. He became Legal Advisor in 2004, prior to which he joined a course at the Royal Defense College and after which he participated in an Advanced Staff and Command Course at the National Defense College in the Netherlands. During his military career, he took up different positions in the Legal Department of the Belgian Armed Forces, e.g. as the head of the International Law and the Operational Law Section. He also served as the senior military legal advisor of the military-strategic headquarter of the European Union in Brussels, after which he retired from active service on 01 July 2023.
Colonel (GS) De Cock has participated in several operational deployments in Afghanistan, during counter-piracy and counter-narcotics operations with the Navy, during Operation Unified Protector, and Operation Inherent Resolve.
Double recipient of the Certificate of Merit by the Military Lieber Society (2008 and 2012), he is also member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo and is a frequent speaker at international and national conferences. He has published numerous articles, including in the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights and the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law.
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