Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, added another international honor to her resumé recently when she was appointed special adviser on crimes against humanity by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Sadat
ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced the appointment of Sadat and two other special advisers, Patricia Viseur Sellers and Diane Marie Amann, Dec. 12.
“I am proud that these three highly respected academics have agreed to serve the Office,” said Bensouda. “Patricia Sellers, Leila Sadat and Diane Marie Amann have a wealth of experience between them. I have no doubt their contributions to the work of the Office and the fight to end impunity for the world’s worst crimes will be invaluable.”
“I have been doing pro bono work for the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and the ICC for years, but to have the ICC prosecutor publicly acknowledge me as an expert on crimes against humanity is thrilling,” Sadat says. “This honor is not only a tribute to my work, but to the important work the law school and Washington University have accomplished over the past decade.”
As a special adviser, Sadat will help the ICC Office of the Prosecutor
formulate strategic policies and advise on questions about the scope of crimes against humanity. This is a new advisory position with a one-year term, renewable annually.
Sadat began writing about crimes against humanity with the publication of her first article in 1994 on the trial of Vichy collaborator Paul Touvier in France.
Touvier was a Nazi collaborator in Occupied France during World War II. In 1994, he became the first Frenchman to be convicted of crimes against humanity. Sadat has been involved in researching and writing about these crimes ever since.
As director of the Harris Institute’s Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, Sadat has been the key mover of the multiyear project to study the problem of crimes against humanity and draft a comprehensive convention addressing their punishment and prevention.
A proposed Crimes Against Humanity (CAH) Convention builds on the legacy of Nuremberg, the first major international criminal trial of Nazi war criminals.
In the decades that followed Nuremberg, the world community continued to see horrific acts perpetrated against citizens of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and other countries around the world.
The proposed convention will fill a critical gap in international law.
Sadat says the proposed CAH Convention is currently in a promotional and educational phase as it is circulated to governments, United Nations decision makers, academics and nongovernmental organizations.As part of this effort, Sadat, along with Steering Committee members Ambassador Hans Corell, former U.N. undersecretary general for legal affairs, and ICC Judge Christine Van den Wyngaert, held an informational side session at the 11th session of ICC Assembly of States Parties at the Hague in November.
In addition, the International Law Commission will be discussing the possibility of elaborating a crimes against humanity convention this spring.
The estimated timeframe for the elaboration of an international convention is six to eight years, and “that is very optimistic,” Sadat says.
Sadat is director and co-founder of the Summer Institute for International Law and Policy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Sadat’s award-winning publications include, among others, Forging a Convention for Crimes Against Humanity (2011) and The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law (2002).
She is a vice president of the International Law Association, American Branch, and created and chaired its International Criminal Court Committee for many years.
She recently held the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the Université of Cergy Pontoise and has been a visiting professor at the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Université de Paris II (Assas).