Roy S. K. Lee (1938 – 31 July 2026) was an international civil servant, lawyer, and diplomat. He served as the director of the Codification Division of the UN Office of Legal Affairs, concurrently serving as the executive secretary of the 1998 Rome Conference that adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
He later served as Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the Asian–African Legal Consultative Organization (AALCO) to the United Nations Headquarters.
Life and career Lee was born in 1938. He earned a degree in law from National Taiwan University. He then earned a master's degree in law from McGill University and a doctorate from the University of London.
He joined the United Nations Secretariat's Division of Human Rights in 1967, later moving to the Office of Legal Affairs. There, he served as secretary of the International Law Commission and of the General Assembly's Sixth (Legal) Committee.
He served as the director of the Codification Division of the Office of Legal Affairs, serving as the executive secretary of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court. He retired from the United Nations in 1998.
He then assumed an associate professorship at Columbia Law School, chairing the university's Problems of Peace seminar, and taught at the Yale School of the Environment. He served as a special fellow of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research from 1998 to 2009.
In 2001, he was elected to the Institut de Droit International and became a full member in 2005. He was later appointed as the ambassador and permanent observer of the Asian–African Legal Consultative Organization to the United Nations Headquarters, serving until his death in 2026.
Lee died in Fairfield County, Connecticut, on 31 July 2026, aged 88.
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