The former Minister of Justice from Gambia was sworn in as the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on June 14, 2012. Ms. Bensouda was a panelist at the World Justice Forum III in Barcelona, where she spoke on reconciling the rule of law with traditional systems of justice.

On 8 September 2004, Mrs. Fatou Bensouda was elected Deputy Prosecutorby the Assembly of States Parties. She is in charge of the Prosecution Division of the Officeof the Prosecutor.

Prior to her election, Mrs. Bensouda worked as a Legal Adviser and Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, rising to the position of Senior Legal Advisor and Head of The Legal Advisory Unit.

Before joining the ICTR, she was the General Manager of a leading commercial bank in The Gambia. Between 1987 and 2000, she was successively Senior State Counsel, Principal State Counsel, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of the Republic, then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, in which capacity she served as Chief Legal Advisor to the President and Cabinet of The Republic of The Gambia.

Mrs. Bensouda also took part in negotiations on the treaty of the Economic 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 the Gambia to the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court. Mrs. Bensouda holds a masters degree in International Maritime Law and Law of The Sea and as such is the first international maritime law expert of The Gambia.

Nabiha Chowdhury The World Justice Project
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