Kim Thuy Seelinger, JD

Special Adviser on Sexual Violence in Conflict to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor
Research Associate Professor, Brown School of Social Work, Public Health and Social Policy
Visiting Professor, School of Law
Director, Center for Human Rights, Gender, and Migration / Institute for Public Health
Washington University in St. Louis

Kim Thuy Seelinger has since 2021 served as the Special Adviser on Sexual Violence in Conflict to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, KC. In this capacity, she supports the Office of the Prosecutor in both case work and policy development to strengthen response to sexual and gender-based crimes.

Seelinger is also a Research Associate Professor at Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work, Public Health and Social Policy, as well as a Visiting Professor at the School of Law. She also directs the Center for Human Rights, Gender, and Migration at the Institute for Public Health. Seelinger is an expert on sexual violence in armed conflict and forced displacement, focusing on prevention of and accountability for these crimes. In addition to providing technical assistance to international and national actors working on war crimes trials and legislative reform, Seelinger supports investigators, lawyers, judges, victims’ advocates, human rights defenders, and asylum adjudicators in developing survivor-centered approaches to their work, including in Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Greece, Mexico, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine.

In addition to advising the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor, Seelinger was an inaugural member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ Advisory Group on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection, an expert commentator on the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict (2014, 2017), and is currently technical advisor to the Global Survivors’ Fund, established by 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winners Dr. Denis Mukwege and Ms. Nadia Murad. She also worked with Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, to draft the United Nations’ Framework on the Prevention of Conflict-related Sexual Violence (2022).

Seelinger’s writing appears in peer-reviewed and mainstream journals, including the Journal of International Criminal Justice, the California Law Review (online), the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, International Review of the Red Cross, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and PLOS Medicine. She has authored several book chapters focused on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence as an international crime, and co-edited “The President on Trial: Prosecuting Hissène Habré,” from Oxford University Press (2020).

Before her recruitment to Washington University in 2019, Seelinger had worked for nearly a decade at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she won various honors for her teaching and service, including a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency in 2015. She remains an active member of the New York State bar.

Laura Boillot is Programme Manager for Article 36. She currently focuses on policy and practice around explosive weapons and coordinates the International Network on Explosive Weapons. Laura previously worked as a Campaign Manager and subsequently as the Director of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC). Prior to that she worked as Program Officer on the Control Arms campaign and for the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).