CO-FOUNDER

Lauren is a research fellow in the ‘Law and the Future of War’ program, at the University of Queensland Law School. Perviously, Lauren served twenty years as an Australian Army signals officer and legal officer. She has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor and on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, as a legal advisor to ADF domestic counter-terrorism operations, and an assistant Inspector-General of the ADF. She specialises in international humanitarian law and universal jurisdiction.

CO-FOUNDER

Melinda is a research fellow at the University of Queensland, focusing on international criminal accountability with respect to universal jurisdiction and international tribunals (ie. ICJ, ICC, ICTY). Melinda recently published De facto International Prosecutors in a Global Era: With my Own Eyes (Cambridge University Press, 2022), which examined the actors, institutions and means to establish individual criminal responsibility over core international crimes. She was awarded a Gerda Henkel Stiftung grant for ‘The Nuremberg Effect’ project.

ADVISOR

Beth is lecturer at the University of Queensland. She recently completed a PhD on US military practices and the laws of war, focusing on the practice of providing compensation for civilian victims of lawful harm. She is Executive Director for Women in International Security (WIIS) Australia, and a researcher and International Humanitarian Law community speaker for the Australian Red Cross. She teaches International Relations, Public Policy and Governance.

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Patrick is Senior Legal Advisor in the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin where he directs the center's work on Syria. He is a German-qualified lawyer and represents survivors in several cases involving international crimes, including the so-called Al Khatib trial before the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany. Prior to that, he worked as an assistant to Civil Party Lawyers at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Patrick received his PhD in 2012 from the University of Hamburg on the subject of victims’ participation in international criminal proceedings.

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From 2009 to 2015, he was Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the US State Department. Prior to that, Ambassador Rapp was the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2009, where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. From 2001 to 2007, he served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history of leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Stephen Rapp is Chair of Board of Commissioners for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). He is also Senior Visiting Fellow of Practice with the Blavatnik School’s Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict’s Programme on International Peace and Security. At the Blavatnik School, he is co-leading a new research and stakeholder consultation project to develop policy proposals to strengthen global capacity to gather and preserve evidence of criminal responsibility of the most serious violations of human rights.

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Daye is a Barrister practicing in Australia and an international legal advisor. She has specific expertise in crimes and human rights violations under international law, with a particular focus on crimes against humanity investigation and case preparation with respect to North Korea. Daye has also advised on secondary prevention of corporate complicity in human rights violations and war crimes in Myanmar. She has broad experience ranging from proposal drafting to witness interviewing and legal analysis to victim support to advocacy before organs such as EU Missions, the UN, and US Congress. Daye holds a PhD in restorative justice for sexual and family violence. Domestically, she practices in state and federal criminal law, administrative and human rights law, and commercial law. Her achievements in legal practice and human rights advocacy have been recognised with the Outstanding Young Lawyer Award of the International Bar Association, Lawyers’ Weekly 30 Under 30, and the Avant-Garde Victorian Bar Readers’ Grant.

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Juan Garcés played a key role in the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998. He was also responsible for the US declassification of documents related to Pinochet for the purpose of informing evidence in Spanish criminal courts. Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish investigating judge who made the extradition request against Pinochet in London, described Juan as the priniciple architect of the Pinochet case, with respect to allegations of genocide and torture. Juan was also one of the earliest witnesses of Pinochet’s atrocities. As advisor to Chilean President, Salvador Allende, he was in the La Moneda Palace with Allende the day it was attacked in the 1973 military coup. He was the only person to escape that day, and years later as a Spanish lawyer submitted the private criminal compliant against Pinochet to Madrid courts, which later led to the arrest of Pinochet in London. He also assisted the Crown office in preparation of Pinochet 3 in the British House of Lords, which successfully argued Pinochet did not enjoy immunity for the crime of torture.

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Souleymane played a key role in the prosecution of the former President of Chad, Hissène Habré. Souleymane was a witness and victim to crimes perpetrated under the Habré regime where he suffered illegal detention, torture, and starvation, amongst other things. When Habré fled Chad to Senegal, Souleymane was released from illegal detention, and he set about collecting witness and victims statements with the hope of achieving justice and accountability for the crimes committed by senior members of the Habré regime in Chad. After nine years in vain and very little indication of an accountability process, Souleymane started to team up with an international community, including Reed Brody and Human Rights Watch. Soon after, Souleymane and several others led the submission of a private criminal complaint in Senegalese courts according to universal jurisdiction principles against Hissène Habré who had remained in exile. While it took many more years for Habré to be indicted in Senegal, the International Court of Justice recognised (Belgium v. Senegal) that Senegal had failed in its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to investigate and prosecute Habré since the private criminal complained submitted by Souleymane Guengueng et al. In 2016, Habré was prosecuted in Senegal for crimes against humanity, torture, rape and sexual assault, amongst other crimes.

*Photo: Ángel Franco/The New York Times

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Reed is an international lawyer specialising in working with victims and witnesses of core international crimes to pursue accountability for those most responsible in national courts, including those exercising universal jurisdiction. Currently, he is a commissioner for the International Commission for Jurists (ICJ). From 1998 to 2016, Brody was Advocacy Director and later Spokesperson for Human Rights Watch. He has pursued accountability for Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier, Gambia's Yahya Jammeh, and Chad's Hissène Habré, amongst others.

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Rain is a Professor and Deputy Dean (Research) at the University of Queensland Law School, where he leads the Law and the Future of War research group. Rain is also a Visiting Legal Fellow at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and a Senior Fellow with the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He holds the title of Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki, where he is affiliated with the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. Rain's current research focuses on the legal challenges associated with military applications of science and technology. His broader research and teaching interest include general international law, the law of armed conflict and human rights law. He is the author of Criminal Jurisdiction over Armed Forces Abroad (Cambridge University Press 2017).

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Yuna is a lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Her research interests lie in the politics of international law, focusing primarily on international criminal law and human rights accountability. She is currently working on a project regarding defence lawyers in international criminal trials as a ‘community of practice.’ She has worked on projects related to instrumentalisation of international criminal justice processes by weak states, domestic accountability for international crimes using ‘universal jurisdiction’ in the context of mass migration, and the crime of aggression and the advent of the liberal international order. Yuna received her DPhil (PhD) in International Relations from the University of Oxford. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Government with honours from Harvard University, and a MPhil in Politics from the University of Cambridge.

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Anthony Cassimatis AM is a Professor at the TC Beirne School of Law, the University of Queensland. Anthony teaches administrative law and public international law. He is the Director of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law at the University of Queensland. He was the chairperson of the Australian Red Cross' International Humanitarian Law Committee for Queensland from 2005-2018 and he remains a member of this committee, which he joined in 1998. Anthony is the author or co-author of 5 books and numerous articles and book chapters on public international law, administrative law and legal advocacy. He is the editor in chief of the Australian International Law Journal. In 2022, Anthony was engaged by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as a subject matter expert.

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Katrina Elliot Myerson is a lawyer and international humanitarian protection specialist. She is an Honorary Adjunct Assistant Professor at Bond University and a PhD researcher at the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Katrina is currently undertaking a doctorate in Atrocity Prevention and Protection at the University of Queensland. Katrina has 10 years of experience working with UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross in various conflict and post-conflict settings, including Afghanistan, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and North Rakhine in Myanmar. Katrina’s work has largely focussed on conditions and treatment of detainees, the conduct of hostilities, and the protection of civilians. Domestically, Katrina has also worked in various roles with the Australian Red Cross in areas such as international humanitarian law, immigration detention monitoring, humanitarian diplomacy, and migration and asylum seeker support policy. She has served as a subject matter expert to a range of organisations, including the Command and Staff College (Australia Defence College), the Indo-Pacific Centre for Military Law, the ASEAN Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, and the Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee.

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Bob Reid AM has extensive experience as an investigator with respect to core international crimes - war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Recently, Bob was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to international criminal investigations, reflecting his long and wide reaching career in international criminal accountability. Early in hs career, Bob was an investigator in the Australia police and, amongst other things, worked for the Australian Federal Attorney-General’s office - for the Special Investigations Unit - to investigate alleged war criminals who entered Australia in the 1940s and 1950s who previously worked with the Nazis during World War II. Thereafter, Bob worked for 17 years within the investigative team at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). While working at the ICTY, in The Hague, Bob was key to the arrest of Ratko Mladic, also known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”. Bob travelled to Serbia to witness the arrest in a Serbian village in May 2011.