Moyo elected IBA president, makes history
CHAIRMAN and senior partner of leading law firm Scanlen and Holderness, Sternford Moyo, is the new president of the International Bar Association (IBA). Hailing from Zimbabwe, Moyo is the first IBA president of African descent in the history of the 74-year-old organisation. He succeeds Brazil’s Horacio Bernardes Neto with a twoyear tenure through to December 31, 2022.
He has held numerous senior IBA roles, including Council member, management board member, advisory board member and chair of the African Regional Forum, deputy secretarygeneral for Southern Africa, co-chair of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, trustee of IBA-established entities, such as the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and eyeWitness to expose atrocities worldwide, and member of the task force on Illicit Financial Flows, Poverty and Human Rights.
Recognising the achievements of his predecessors and committing to build on their efforts, Moyo, whose firm is one of the founder members of the pan-African network LEXAfrica and also a member of Meritas, commented: “It was great and visionary leadership that conceived and implemented the idea of the International Bar Association; to create relationships and exchanges among individual lawyers, bar associations and law societies; to pursue capacity building for bar associations; to promote continuing professional development in order to enhance service to the public; to protect and promote the rule of law, human rights, effective administration of justice and core values of the legal profession; to promote harmonisation and uniformity in the resolution of difficult legal problems; and to work with international juridical organisations.
“The IBA, under the direction of my predecessors and its executive officers, has been highly successful in advancing these objectives. Consequently, as I take over as president of our association, I am pleased to say that I stand on a platform of excellent work done by my predecessors and the employees of the association.
“My role shall be to work towards deepening the fulfilment of the objectives of our association and increasing diversity, eliminating all forms of discrimination in the practice of law and administration of justice. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my predecessors and employees of the association for the solid platform from which I shall be working.”
Moyo recently outlined additional objectives and areas of focus for his IBA presidency, including:
developing effective anti-corruption strategies;
strengthening IBA project output from constituents to provide “role model” material to improve the practical exercise of law;
updating guidance and recommendations regarding the extractive industries so that current strategies meet investor protection and developmental rights of the communities where the investment takes place;
focusing on cyber security with the aim of working towards developing best practice guidelines for a new global framework for public institutions and private companies; and
using digital resources to make the knowledge generated by the IBA more readily available to developing bar associations, lawyers in low-income jurisdictions and those at entry level in high-income jurisdictions.
Moyo’s professional career has seen him hold a variety of leadership positions, including having been a bar leader in Zimbabwe
and in southern Africa, and corporate leader in mining, manufacturing, financial services and leadership development.
In 1990, he was selected by the United States Information Services to participate in a programme to familiarise young African leaders with the American legal system and its background. In 2004, he participated in a media advocacy course run by
the University of Oxford.
As senior partner at Scanlen & Holderness, a large corporate law practice established in 1894, Moyo specialises in mining, corporate and commercial law.
The IBA, the global voice of the legal profession, is the foremost organisation for international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies.
Established in 1947, shortly after the creation of the United Nations, it was born out of the conviction that an organisation made up of the world’s bar associations could contribute to global stability and peace through the administration of justice.
In the ensuing 70 years since its creation, the organisation has evolved from an association comprised exclusively of bar associations and law societies to one that incorporates individual international lawyers and entire law firms.
The present membership comprises more than 80 000 individual international lawyers from most of the world’s leading law firms and some 190 bar associations and law societies spanning more than 170 countries.
The IBA has considerable expertise in providing assistance to the global legal community, and through its global membership, it influences the development of international law reform and helps to shape the future of the legal profession throughout the world.
The IBA’s administrative office is in London, United Kingdom. Regional offices are located in: São Paulo, Brazil; Seoul, South Korea; and Washington DC, United States, while the IBA’s International Criminal Court and International Criminal Law Programme (ICC & ICL) is managed from an office in The Hague, Netherlands.
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, established in 1995 under Founding Honorary President Nelson Mandela, is an autonomous and financially independent entity, working to promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law, and to preserve the independence of the Judiciary and the legal profession worldwide.
THE IBA has considerable expertise in providing assistance to the global legal community, and through its global membership, it influences the development of international law reform and helps to shape the future of the legal profession throughout the world.