Patricia Viseur Sellers

Bio

Patricia Viseur Sellers is an Advisory Board Member and Senior Research Fellow with the Human Rights Center. She is an international criminal attorney and the Special Advisor for Gender to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Ms. Sellers is also a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College of Oxford University, where she lectures on international criminal law. She was the Legal Advisor for Gender, Acting Head of the Legal Advisory Section and a prosecutor at the Yugoslav (ICTY) Tribunal from 1994 until February 2007.  She developed the legal strategies and was a member of the trial teams of Akayesu, Furundzija, and Kunarac. These landmark decisions remain the pre-imminent legal standards for the interpretation of sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, torture and enslavement. She has served as a legal advisor and a trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She has also served as an expert consultant to UN bodies addressing children and armed conflict, gender and women’s rights, and internal investigations. Ms. Sellers advises governments, such as Colombia, Guatemala, Libya, and Kenya, international institutions, such as the UN and OSCE, and civil society organisations on international criminal law and humanitarian law. Ms. Sellers has lectured extensively and authored many articles on gender and sexual violence under international criminal law. She has received multiple awards for her work, including the American Society of International Law’s Prominent Women in Law award. She holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Rutgers University.