Christian Vidal-León joined the ACWL as Counsel in May 2016. He previously worked as a dispute settlement lawyer in both the Legal Affairs Division and the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization, as well as a legal officer in the Directorate-General for Trade of the European Commission, where he was involved in a number of WTO disputes and in trade negotiations. In addition, Mr. Vidal-León has also served as manager of the international trade and investment department for Southern Africa of a global consulting firm in Johannesburg, and as legal associate in a prominent Brussels-based law firm dealing with international and European trade- and investment-related issues. Moreover, Mr. Vidal-León has assisted arbitrators in a number of international investment tribunals under the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). He is a qualified lawyer in both Mexico and Spain with law degrees from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Lleida University. Mr. Vidal-León holds an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University and a Masters of International Law and Economics from the University of Bern, in Switzerland. Mr. Vidal-León is currently a visiting senior research fellow in the Mandela Institute, in the School of Law of the University of the Witwatersrand. He is fluent in Spanish, English and French.