UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - South African judge Navanethem Pillay, who currently serves on the International Criminal Court (ICC), is to be named as the new high commissioner for human rights, succeeding Louise Arbour, diplomats and UN officials said Friday.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon was expected to announce his choice shortly. His decision has to be endorsed by the 192-member General Assembly.

Diplomats and UN officials said Pillay, an ICC appeals chamber judge since 2003, was picked from a short list that also included prominent Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist Hila Jilani and Argentine human rights lawyer Juan Mendez.

Pillay, who was born in 1941 and is of Tamil descent, previously served as a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In that capacity, she led the landmark decisions defining rape as an institutionalized weapon of war and a crime of genocide.

In 1967, she became the first woman to set up a law practice in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province, and the first black woman to serve in the High Court in the country.

The US-educated South African is to take over from Arbour, a 61-year-old Canadian jurist, who stepped down at the end of June after completing a four-year mandate.

Arbour announced in March that she would not renew her mandate due to personal reasons, after a period that saw her office released damning reports on countries ranging from the United States to Zimbabwe to Sudan.

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