Our People

Dr Patricia Sellers Viseur

Visiting Fellow

Special Advisor, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court / Professor

Faculty of Law

Honorary Doctorate (City University, New York); JD (Pennsylvania); BA (Rutgers)

Patricia Viseur Sellers, an international criminal lawyer.  She teaches at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. She is a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College and a Fellow at the Bonavero Human Rights Center at the University of Oxford. She is the former Special Advisor for Slavery Crimes to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Previously, she served as Special Advisor for Gender to the Prosecutor. From 1994-2007 she was the Legal Advisor for Gender, Acting Head of the Legal Advisory Section and a prosecutor at the Yugoslav Tribunal (ICTY).  She served as the Legal Advisor for Gender at the Rwanda Tribunal (ICTR) from 1995-1999.   Ms. Sellers was a prosecutor on the trial teams of Akayesu, Furundzija, Kunarac, Nikolic, Oric and Stankovic.  She has developed legal strategies that led to landmark decisions regarding sexual violence as constitutive conduct of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, torture and enslavement under international criminal law.

Ms. Sellers advises governments and civil society on international criminal law issues.  She has lectured extensively and authored numerous articles, including, ‘Missing in Action: The International Crime of the Slave Trade’, ‘Wartime Female Slavery: Enslavement?’ and ‘The International Crimes of Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Feminist Critique.”   She has testified as an expert witness before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the cases of J. v. Peru, Favela Nova Brasilia v. Brazil, Albarracín v. Ecuador and Lima and Others v. Colombia. She is the recipient of the prestigious Goler T. Butcher Medal and the Prominent Women in International Law Award by the American Society of International Law. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of International Law.  She holds an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the City University of New York, as well as an Honorary Fellow for Lifetime Achievement from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, her alma mater.