UNITED NATIONS: UN chief Ban Ki-moon has formally informed the General Assembly that he plans to name South African judge Navanethem Pillay to succeed Louise Arbour as high commissioner for human rights, his spokeswoman said on Thursday.

"It is now up to the (192-member) General Assembly to approve" the choice of Pillay, who currently serves as an appeals chamber judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC), spokeswoman Michele Montas told AFP.

Diplomats said the Assembly was expected to meet next Monday to endorse Ban's choice.

Pillay, who has been with the ICC 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, according to diplomats and UN officials.

The highly respected South African jurist, 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 played a key role in landmark decisions defining rape as an institutionalised 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 woman of colour to serve in the High Court in the country.

The US-educated Pillay 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. - AFP/de