José Alberto Azeredo Lopes
Minister of Defence, Portugal
José Alberto Azeredo Lopes is the Minister of National Defense of Portugal. José Alberto is originally a Professor of Public International Law at the Oporto Law School of the Portuguese Catholic University, where he also gained his PhD, after the completion of a Diploma in Advanced Studies from the Institut Européen des Hautes Etudes Internationales, in Nice, and the attendance of The Hague Academy of International Law. In his academic career, he devoted himself mainly to studying the right of peoples to self-determination, the use of force in international relations, human rights and the law of armed confl ict. He has been a guest lecturer of the Naval Institute of High Studies and of the National Defense Institute of Portugal and of the Blanquerna Comunicació, Universitat Ramón Llui, in Barcelona. Between 2005 and 2006, he has served as Director of his School and for 9 years, between 1993 and 2004, he chaired the Department of International Studies of the University. In his international experience, among other prominent tasks, he was the rapporteur for the Judicial Sector of the World Bank Joint Assessment Mission for East Timor, in 1999. He also coordinated a team of international observers to the referendum on the self-determination of East Timor, organized under the aegis of the United Nations. At the national level, and most prominently, he was the fi rst president of the Regulatory Authority for the Media. He worked as expert, in the fi eld of freedom of the media, with the OSCE Representative for the Freedom of the Press in Vienna, in 2014. He has given many speeches and conferences in his areas of expertise and he has participated in several TV and radio programs as public intellectual and commentator; he has been a weekly columnist with “Jornal de Notícias”. He has taken offi ce as Minister of National Defense of Portugal on the 26th November 2015.
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Updated: May 31, 2018
