Event Description
Join PILPG on July 14 from 12 pm to 1 pm ET for a conversation with experts regarding the Office of the Prosecutor’s recently released Policy on the Crime of Gender Persecution. In this conversation, we will focus on the groups that gender-based crimes target as defined by the Rome Statute.
The Rome Statute definition provides that gender-based crimes target women, men, children, and LGBTQI+ persons, on the basis of their gender. During this roundtable, the experts will discuss how perpetrators use gender-based crimes to regulate or punish those who they perceive as transgressing the “accepted” norms of gender expression. The criteria for the targeted group can be based on their roles, behaviors, activities, attributes, or other forms of expression. The experts will also explore how such criteria is used to regulate every aspect of life, determining the extent of individuals’ freedom of movement, their reproductive options, who they can marry, where they can work, how they can dress, and whether they are simply allowed to exist.
The panelists will include Special Adviser on Gender Persecution to the ICC Prosecutor Professor Lisa Davis, UN Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity Victor Madrigal-Borloz, Professor of Law at Western University Professor Valerie Oosterveld, and Special Adviser on Slavery Crimes to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Patricia Viseur Sellers.
This will be the third event of the series on the Policy on the Crime of Gender Persecution. The first event was held on May 26, 2023 titled Dusting off the Law Books on Gender Persecution: Why a Policy on the Crime against Humanity of Gender Persecution? The second event was held on June 27, 2023 titled Dusting off the Law Books on Gender Persecution: Fundamental Rights.
The event will be moderated by PILPG Managing Director Milena Sterio.
This is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.
Speakers
Professor Valerie Oosterveld
Valerie Oosterveld is a Professor at Western University's Faculty of Law in Canada. Her research and writing focus on gender issues within international criminal justice. She has published widely on the subject of the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Professor Oosterveld is a member of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is the Director of Western University’s Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. She served as an Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law from 2014-2018.Before joining the Faculty of Law in 2005, Valerie served in the Legal Affairs Bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In this role, she provided legal advice on international criminal accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, especially with respect to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. She served on the Canadian delegation to various ICC-related negotiations, including the Assembly of States Parties. In 1998, she was a member of the Canadian delegation to UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an ICC. In this role, she negotiated various gender provisions, as Canada played a leading role in pressing for a gender-sensitive Rome Statute. In 2010, she served on the Canadian delegation to the Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda.
Professor Lisa Davis
Prof. Lisa Davis is an Associate Professor of Law and Co- Director of the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic (formerly named International Women’s Human Rights Clinic). Prof. Davis has written and reported extensively on international human rights and gender issues including women’s rights and LGBTQI+ rights, with a focus on peace building and security issues in conflict and disaster settings. Professor Davis has provided expert remarks before the UN Security Council, U.S. Congress, U.K. Parliament, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and various international human rights bodies and is also a member of the JRR-UN Women SGBV Justice Experts Roster.In the case of Karen Atala and Daughters v. Chile, Prof. Davis co-authored the only amicus curiae brief to argue that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes under international law. In 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a ground- breaking decision, providing for an explicit prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2010, Prof. Davis served as lead counsel for the Inter- American Commission petition on behalf of displaced Haitian women and girls, which resulted in the Commission’s first-ever precautionary measures decision recognising State responsibility to prevent third-party gender-based violence. Prof. Davis was subsequently awarded the 2011 People’s Choice Gavel Award by their peers for the decision.
Patricia V. Sellers
Ms Patricia V. Sellers, an international criminal lawyer, is a Special Adviser on Slavery Crimes at the International Criminal Court and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, where she teaches international criminal law and human rights law. She is a Practicing Professor at London School of Economics and a Senior Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley. She was the Special Advisor on Gender to the former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mrs Fatou Bensouda, from 2016-2021. She was the Legal Advisor for Gender, Acting Head of the Legal Advisory Section and a prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 1994-2007 and the Legal Advisor for Gender at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 1995-1999. Ms Sellers was a prosecutor on the trial teams of Akayesu, Furundzija, Kunarac, Nikolic and Oric. She has developed legal strategies that led to landmark decisions regarding sexual violence as constitutive conduct of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, torture and enslavement under international criminal law. Ms Sellers has advised governments and civil society entities and lectured extensively on international criminal law. She has authored numerous articles, including, Missing in Action: The International Crime of the Slave Trade, Wartime Female Slavery: Enslavement?, and The International Crimes of Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Feminist Critique. She has testified as an expert witness before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the cases of J. v. Peru, Favela Nova Brasilia v. Brazil, Albarracín v. Ecuador and Lima and Others v. Colombia. Ms Sellers is the recipient of the prestigious Goler T. Butcher Medal and the Prominent Women in International Law Award given by the American Society of International Law. She holds an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the City University of New York, as well as an Honorary Fellow for Lifetime Achievement from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, her alma mater.
Victor Madrigal-Borloz
Victor Madrigal-Borloz was appointed as UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity in late 2017. His initial three-year term started on 1 January 2018. He is the second Independent Expert to serve in this capacity. A Costa Rican jurist, Mr. Madrigal-Borloz is a senior visiting researcher at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, in residence at Harvard Law School from July 2019 to December 2023.
MODERATOR
Professor Milena Sterio
Milena Sterio is the Managing Director of PILPG and the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio leads PILPG’s Thought Leadership Initiative.
Sterio is one of six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog, and a frequent contributor to the blog focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. While in Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to the province of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. Sterio has also assisted piracy prosecutions in Mauritius, Kenya and the Seychelles Islands. Sterio is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book, “The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law,” (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.