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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary


For Immediate Release March 26, 1999
               PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES HAROLD HONGJU KOH 
                  AS COMMISSIONER ON THE COMMISSION 
                ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

The President today announced his intent to appoint Harold Hongju Koh as Commissioner on the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Mr. Harold Koh, of New Haven, Connecticut, is currently the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the Department of State. He previously was the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law and Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. Prior to beginning his professorship at Yale in 1985, Mr. Koh clerked for both Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court, and worked as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. Koh has written more than seventy articles on international law, international business transactions, human rights and constitutional law, and is the author of several published and forthcoming books on international relations, law and human rights. He has received numerous honors for his human rights work, including the Asian American Bar Association of New York's 1997 Outstanding Lawyer of the Year Award and recognition by the American Lawyer magazine as one of America's 45 leading public sector lawyers under the age of 45.

Mr. Koh earned a B.A. from Harvard University in 1975, an Honours B.A. from Oxford University in 1977, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1980. Mr. Koh has been a Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at Oxford University, and has taught at the Hague Academy of International Law, the University of Toronto, and the George Washington University National Law Center.

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe is responsible for monitoring compliance with the articles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, with particular regard to human rights. In addition, the Commission shall encourage the development of programs and activities of both the U.S. government and private organizations to expand East-West economic cooperation.

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