Ms. Titta Maja-Luoto has served as the Director General at the Department for Development Policy at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland since December 2021. Prior to joining the Ministry in 2001, she worked for UNDP and UNICEF. She has also extensive background in working for the development NGO’s in Finland and the EU.
Member State authority
Putting IHL at the heart of external action: Ensuring accountability
Aquarium
Building on the first European Humanitarian Forum, as well as on the UNGA high-level event on accountability for sexual violence and other violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), this session continues the discussion on the means to improve monitoring of violations against IHL.
The session will discuss how the EU ensures that IHL is at the heart of its external action, and how EU Member States best can promote IHL. In addition, the session will evaluate how the ICC as well as preventive measures supported under ECHO’s Programmatic Partnership with the ICRC can promote IHL compliance in the current global context.
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.
Putting IHL at the heart of external action: Ensuring accountability
Aquarium
Building on the first European Humanitarian Forum, as well as on the UNGA high-level event on accountability for sexual violence and other violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), this session continues the discussion on the means to improve monitoring of violations against IHL.
The session will discuss how the EU ensures that IHL is at the heart of its external action, and how EU Member States best can promote IHL. In addition, the session will evaluate how the ICC as well as preventive measures supported under ECHO’s Programmatic Partnership with the ICRC can promote IHL compliance in the current global context.
International organisation
Putting IHL at the heart of external action: Ensuring accountability
Aquarium
Building on the first European Humanitarian Forum, as well as on the UNGA high-level event on accountability for sexual violence and other violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), this session continues the discussion on the means to improve monitoring of violations against IHL.
The session will discuss how the EU ensures that IHL is at the heart of its external action, and how EU Member States best can promote IHL. In addition, the session will evaluate how the ICC as well as preventive measures supported under ECHO’s Programmatic Partnership with the ICRC can promote IHL compliance in the current global context.