Council Screening of 'The Prosecutors': Ending Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Leslie Thomas, Director and Producer, The Prosecutors; Founder, ART WORKS Projects; Kim Thuy Seelinger, Director, Sexual Violence Program, Human Rights Center, Berkeley School of Law; Patricia Viseur Sellers, Special Advisor for Gender, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court. Moderated by Steve Bynum.

Ending Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

For centuries sexual violence in conflict zones has terrorized an untold number of communities. And often it has been considered collateral damage instead of a war crime. Through the power of film and storytelling, an understanding of this global epidemic is now reaching wider audiences and prompting collective action, with an emphasis on ending impunity for perpetrators. Screening this spring at the Council, the new documentary, The Prosecutors follows lawyers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Colombia in their fight for justice against cases of conflict related-sexual violence. How can victims and witnesses come forward during ongoing armed conflict and give testimony? Can we end the use of this insidious tool of war, and how effective are legal frameworks in prosecuting culprits?

Join the Council and a panel of experts, including filmmaker Leslie Thomas for an exclusive discussion and screening of The Prosecutors.

Speaker Bio

Leslie Thomas

@prosecutorsfilm

Director and Producer, The Prosecutors; Founder, ART WORKS Projects

Leslie Thomas is the founder of ART WORKS Projects, an Emmy-award winning art director, and architect. Current projects include directing The Prosecutors, curating a touring exhibition on ending female genital mutilation for the United Nations, and co-editing a book of photography on the impact of war on children in Syria. She is in pre-production on a narrative feature on women’s rights and in development on a film about the movement for Irish independence. Thomas’s multi-media human rights focused work has toured across five continents in major policy, academic, and cultural settings and been the recipient of grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, and many other philanthropic institutions. She is a graduate of Columbia University and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Kim Thuy Seelinger

@ktseelinger

Director, Sexual Violence Program, Human Rights Center, Berkeley School of Law

Kim Thuy Seelinger is the director of the Sexual Violence Program at the Human Rights Center at Berkeley School of Law. She oversees the center’s research, teaching, and writing on sexual violence during armed conflict and forced migration. Seelinger also teaches Refugee Law and serves as supervising attorney to Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Workshop. Her current work focuses on accountability for wartime sexual violence, protection in humanitarian settings, and the prosecution of international crimes in national courts. She serves on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ advisory group on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection. Seelinger is also president of the Executive Committee of Civitas Maxima, a Swiss organization documenting war crimes and representing victims in trials around the world. Seelinger graduated from New York University School of Law.

Patricia Viseur Sellers

Special Advisor for Gender, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court

Patricia Sellers is a special advisor for Gender for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. She is a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford, and is a practicing professor at LSE, as well as a senior research fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley. Sellers was a prosecutor at the Yugoslav Tribunal from 1994-2007, and the legal advisor for Gender at the Rwanda Tribunal from 1995-1999. 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. Sellers served as special legal Consultant to the Gender and Women’s Rights Division of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights and to the Secretary’s General’s Special Representative to Children in Armed Conflict. She is an advisor on the new documentary ‘The Prosecutors,’ and holds an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the City University of New York.

Schedule

4:45 p.m. Registration
5:00 p.m. Exclusive screening of The Prosecutors
6:00 p.m. Discussion
7:00 p.m. Adjournment

Council Screening of 'The Prosecutors': Ending Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Ending Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Speaker Bio

Schedule

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