Suddenly, tears welled up in his eyes. "A child dies every 15 minutes in Gaza. We have been talking for two hours: Eight children have already died." Since the tragic day of October 7, with more than 1,400 persons murdered by Hamas in Israel, and the outbreak of war, Johann Soufi, 41, has become a voice of Gaza. A lawyer specializing in international law, Soufi said, "I don't want to become a media personality, the embodiment of he defender of the people of Gaza. But I do want to give them a voice."

In an op-ed published in the French edition of Le Monde on September 21, he wrote: "In the absence of any prospect of a political solution, only the International Criminal Court (ICC) is today capable of bringing hope of justice to the Palestinian victims." Now, as the war rages on, he explained, "Justice can be patient. The emergency is the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, the protection of civilians and the survival conditions of the thousands of people displaced to the south of the territory."

From September 2020 to March 2023, he headed legal affairs for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA). It constituted more than 13,000 employees, with 1.6 million beneficiaries at the time. "UNWRA manages schools, hospitals, social services, food distribution, labor law, international law," explained the man who was never imagined for such a mission.

The son of a Breton mother and a Kabyle father (he holds French and Algerian nationalities), both lawyers, Soufi grew up and studied in Cergy, close to Paris. He joined a criminal law firm in Pontoise, also on the outskirts of Paris, but did not thrive there. "I wanted to tackle bigger issues. Justice is something I see on a much larger scale.."

At the age of 25, he wrote to the 300 lawyers working with the ICC. Only one, Arthur Vercken, gave him a chance. He joined his team to take part in the defense of Callixte Kalimanzira, a former senior official in the Rwandan Ministry of the Interior on trial for his involvement in massacres of Tutsis. He flew to Kigali, then to Tanzania, where the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is based. He stayed for four years. "It was wonderful. That's when I got hooked on international justice and said to myself that I would do it until the day I died."

This was followed by assignments in East Timor, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and the Central African Republic. In 2012, he was recruited by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which was trying Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia. He then joined the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, during the trial of the alleged assassins of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

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