2012 VLS Charney Lecture - Reflections from ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda
991 views · Published 28 August 2012 · 50:16 · Indexed 4 November 2026
Channel: Vanderbilt University · 2012 · Education
Fatou Bensouda of Gambia is Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), having assumed her duties on June 16, 2012. She previously served as Deputy Prosecutor in charge of the Prosecution Division of the Office of the Prosecutor since 2004 and served as legal adviser and trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), eventually becoming Senior Legal Advisor and head of the Legal Advisory Unit. Bensouda succeeded Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court's first Prosecutor since its 2002 launch. She is the first African and first woman to hold the position. As Deputy Prosecutor, Bensouda supervised the ICC's first successful prosecution of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Bensouda was an obvious choice as Ocampo's successor. Per the Rome Statute, which established the court in 1998, Bensouda was elected by the 121 nations in the ICC Assembly of States Parties for a term of nine years. Apart from the cases already in proceedings, the Office of the Prosecutor is presently handling seven situations that could generate additional cases from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Darfur region, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, and of particular recent note the cases arising from Libya. Bensouda is also conducting preliminary examination of other situations, including Afghanistan, Georgia, Guinea, Colombia, Mali, and Nigeria. Before joining the ICTR, she was the general manager of a leading commercial bank in Gambia. She has served as the Solicitor General, Attorney General, and Minister of Justice, in which she was the Chief Legal Advisor to the President and the Cabinet of The Republic of Gambia. Bensouda has also participated in the negotiations to establish the Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West African Parliament, and the ECOWAS Tribunal. She has been a delegate at United Nations' conferences on crime prevention, the Organization of African Unity's Ministerial Meetings on Human Rights, and the delegate of Gambia to the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court. Bensouda holds a master's degree in international maritime law and law of the sea, making her Gambia's first international maritime law expert. The lecture series, supported by the Jonathan I. Charney Memorial Fund, honors Professor Jonathan I. Charney, an expert in international law who held the Lee S. & Charles A. Speir Chair at Vanderbilt Law School until his death in 2002.
