Dr. Marks is the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights and Director of the Program on Human Rights in Development at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also the Senior Fellow at Harvard’s University Committee on Human Rights Studies.
He holds academic degrees from Stanford University and the Universities of Paris, Besançon, Nice, Strasbourg and the University of Damascus. Until July 1999, he was Director of the United Nations Studies Program and Co-Director of the Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) of Columbia University. He has also taught at Columbia Law School, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, the University of Phnom Penh Faculty of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, the New School for Social Research, Rutgers University School of Law, the City University of Hong Kong School of Law, and the University of Hong Kong Law School.
He served in the United Nations system for 12 years, first at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris and then in peacekeeping operations in Cambodia and the Western Sahara. He also worked for the Ford Foundation (New York) and the International Institute of Human Rights (Strasbourg). He has been a consultant to UNDP, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF and other international institutions and serves on the board of numerous nongovernmental organizations. He is currently chair of the UN High Level Task Force on the Implementation of the Right to Development under the Human Rights Council.
Professor Marks's publications relate to human rights, public health, development, peacebuilding, international institutions and international law. His current research focuses on integrating human rights into sustainable human development; biotechnology and human rights; impunity for mass atrocities; terrorism and human rights; cultural rights; tobacco control; and human rights education. He recently co-edited a book on Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political and Economic Dimensions and a reader on Perspectives on Health and Human Rights, as well as editing Health and Human Rights: Basic International Documents, now in its second edition. Professor Marks is currently collaborating on a book on economic and human rights approaches to poverty reduction, based on a research project for UNICEF, and is overseeing research on the assessment of development partnership from the perspective of the right to development, as part of his work for the United Nations Human Rights Council.
He directs Harvard Series on Health and Human Rights at Harvard University Press and co-directs the annual intensive summer course on health and human rights at HSPH.
In his capacity as Senior Fellow at the University Committee on Human Rights Studies, he is working on a human rights curriculum for Harvard College in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
