Olga A. Khazova - Biography#

The candidate is a leading legal scholar in Russian and international family law. Apart from the Moscow School of Social & Economic Sciences “Shaninka”, she is also affiliated with the Private Law Research Centre and the “Higher School of Economics”. For more than 30 years, Prof. Khazova worked at the Institute of State & Law (Russian Academy of Sciences; until 2018). She holds a Ph.D. from that Institute and an LL.M. from Cornell University Law School (USA). Besides teaching, she consults on children’s rights and international family law matters. She authored the books “Marriage and Divorce in Western Family Law” and “The Art of Legal Writing”, and wrote numerous scholarly articles and chapters published in Russia and abroad. Prof. Khazova was a British Academy Visiting scholar (1993 and 1999) and was awarded a Fulbright Program scholarship (USA) (1998 - 1999). She was invited as a guest professor at the University of Vienna (Law Faculty; 2009, 2012 and 2015) and received enthusiastic feedback from the audience. She was a member of the “Child-Friendly Justice Group” (Council of Europe; 2009 - 2010). In 2011 - 2013, Prof. Khazova was a key senior expert in the EU project on the Application of the Hague Conventions on Protection of Children in Russia. Currently, she is a member of two HCCH Expert Groups: Parentage/Surrogacy and Parental/Family Agreements. She is a regular speaker at international conferences and symposia; most recently at the “Renew Europe Webinar on children rights in the digital world” (30.08.2021), and at Leiden University (13.12.2021) and Nova School of Law, Lisbon (10.01.2022). She serves as Vice-President of the ISFL and as Fellow of the IAFL. For two terms, the candidate was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). While at the Committee, she focused on the children’s rights issues in the European countries and was a rapporteur for the dialogues with Austria, Germany, Italy Lithuania, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and the UK. During her mandate, she was a Vice-Chair of the Committee in 2017-18. Her mandate expired on 28 February 2021.