2026 Genocide Awareness Lecture - "Srebrenica: Genocide Gendered"

The Cohen Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will host Prof. Patricia Viseur Sellers, an international criminal lawyer, as the 2026 Genocide Awareness Lecturer. In her talk, which is entitled "Srebrenica: Genocide Gendered," she will examine the gendered aspects of the jurisprudence of the Srebrenica cases as rendered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The adjudication of the Srebrenica genocide resides in the public's memory for the horrific killing of Bosnian Muslim men and boys. However, the body of case law demonstrates that the trial chambers and appellate chambers observed and ruled upon evidence of the gendered physical and psychological harms, such as the diminished reproductive proclivity of the Srebrenica Muslim community. The Genocide Convention emerged from egregious events committed prior to and during World War II. Provisions of the Genocide Convention proscribe the destruction and any attempted destruction of a group by means, inclusive of inflictions against the reproductive, sexual capacities of a group. The Srebrenica genocide, consonant in its complexity with the intended safeguards in the provisions of the Genocide Convention, must be understood, remembered and memorialized as innately gendered.

Speaker Bio:

Patricia Viseur Sellers is an international criminal lawyer. She teaches on the law faculty of the University of Oxford where she is a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College and a Fellow at the Bonavero Center for Human Rights. She is the former Special Advisor for Slavery Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. She, also, served as the Special Advisor for Gender to the previous Prosecutor. From 1994-2007, Prof. Sellers was the Legal Advisor for Gender, the Acting Head of the Legal Advisory Section and an Acting Senior Tial Attorney at the Yugoslav Tribunal (ICTY). From 1995-2000, she was the Legal Advisor for Gender at the Rwanda Tribunal (ICTR). At these ad hoc tribunals, she was on the trial teams of Akayesu, Furundzija, Kunarac, Nikolic, Oric and Stankovic where she developed the legal strategies that led to landmark jurisprudence regarding sexual violence as war crimes, as crimes against humanity, as genocide, as torture and as enslavement under international criminal law.

Prof. Sellers advises United Nations’ agencies, governments and civil society on matters concerning international criminal law. 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 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.

Details and Registration Information:

This lecture is made possible through donor funding. If you would like to make a gift to support this lecture or other Institute offerings, please visit our website.

This year's Genocide Awareness Lecture is part of a Spring 2026 series on Bosnia as well as a 2025-2026 series on "Gender and Genocide" being offered by the Cohen Institute. Speakers in this series represent a wide range of scholarly research and views; our guests' perspectives should not be taken as representative of the Cohen Institute or Keene State College as a whole.

This event is free and open to everyone. REGISTER HERE (link coming soon!)

This event is part of the Cohen Center calendar.