| José Luís Jesus | |
| Office1: | Minister of Foreign Affairs |
| Term Start1: | 1998 |
| Term End1: | 1999 |
| Predecessor1: | Amílcar Spencer Lopes |
| Successor1: | Rui Alberto de Figueiredo Soares |
| President1: | António Mascarenhas Monteiro |
| Birth Date: | 20 September 1950 |
| Birth Place: | Ribeira Grande, Santo Antão, Cape Verde |
| Occupation: | Politician |
| Education: | University of Lisbon St. John's University |
José Luís Jesus (born September 20, 1950) is a former Cape Verdean politician. He was foreign minister of the country from 1998-1999.[1]
He was born in Ribeira Grande, in the north of Santo Antão, one of the northernmost Cape Verdean communities. In 1978, he headed abroad to the University of Lisbon in Portugal not long after independence of his nation. Later in 1985, he took courses in international law, political sciences and politics at St. John's University in New York City. From 1979 to 1982, he headed a delegation of his country at the third UN conference on maritime law. He also served as chairmen of the Group of African States at the United Nations in 1986. He became Foreign Minister from 1998 to 1999. He was later Cape Verdean ambassador to Israel, Portugal and Spain from 1994 to 1996.
Since October 1, 1999, he has been judge at the International Tribune in Hamburg. Later, he was president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) from 2008 to 2011. He succeeded the German jurist Rüdiger Wolfrum and was succeeded by the Japanese Shunji Yanai.