Valerie Oosterveld

Guest Author

Valerie Oosterveld (Bluesky, LinkedIn) is the Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice and a Professor at Western University’s Faculty of Law in Canada. Her research and writing focus on gender issues within international criminal justice. She has published widely on the subject of the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, including as co-editor of Gender and International Criminal Law (OUP, 2022). She served as Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2023-2025, as a Research Fellow at the Western Academy for Advanced Research in 2025, and as Acting Director of Western’s Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction from 2022-2025.

Before joining the Faculty of Law in 2005, Valerie served in the Legal Affairs Bureau of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In this role, she provided legal advice on international criminal accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, especially with respect to the ICC, the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. She served on the Canadian delegation to various ICC-related negotiations, including the Assembly of States Parties. In 1998, she was a member of the Canadian delegation to the UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an ICC. In this role, she negotiated various gender provisions, as Canada played a leading role in pressing for a gender-sensitive Rome Statute. In 2010, she served on the Canadian delegation to the Review Conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in Kampala, Uganda.

Articles by this author:

People sit, their backs to the camera, in a large hall, watching a large TV screen on a platform that shows Ongwen's face. Two illegible banners hang on stands to the right of the screen. Two windows behind the platform are covered to shade the brightness and ease viewing of the television.

How to Acknowledge Forced Marriage as a Standalone Crime in the Draft Crimes Against Humanity Treaty

May 1, 2026 Natalia Seco García and Valerie Oosterveld

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stands to give her opening statement in front of a computer. A group of people in her Prosecution team sit near her

Recognizing the Complexity of Gender in the Crime Against Humanity of Persecution

Jul. 21, 2023 Valerie Oosterveld