Notes to Editor:
- Council for the Examination of Atrocities in the DRC website: https://CEADRC.org/
- Full biographies of Council members:
Julienne Lusenge, Co-Chair
Julienne Lusenge is one of Africa’s most prominent advocates for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, with over four decades of frontline experience in the DRC.
She is co-founder and President of Solidarité Féminine pour la Paix et le Développement Intégral (SOFEPADI), a coalition of forty women’s organisations, and founder and Executive Director of the Fonds pour les Femmes Congolaises (FFC), which channels international donor resources to more than 250 women-led local organisations across fourteen DRC provinces.
Her work has directly supported the prosecution of over 800 perpetrators of gender-based violence and war crimes, and SOFEPADI’s medical centre has treated more than 7,500 survivors.
In 2020 the World Health Organization appointed her co-chair of an independent commission investigating sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarian workers during the 2018 Ebola outbreak in the DRC.
Her recognition includes the US State Department’s International Women of Courage Award (2021), the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity (2021) and inclusion in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People (2024).
Sir Howard Morrison KC, Co-Chair
Sir Howard Morrison KC is one of the United Kingdom’s foremost specialists in international criminal and humanitarian law, with a legal career spanning nearly five decades.
He began as a UK barrister before serving as a Senior Circuit Judge and Senior Justice of the UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, then as UK judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where he presided over the trial of Radovan Karadžić, and subsequently as UK judge at the International Criminal Court, serving two terms as President of the Appeals Division.
In recognition of his services to international law he was appointed OBE, CBE and KCMG. He holds academic appointments as Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, Honorary Professor at Leicester University, an honorary doctorate of law, and is a Senior Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at Cambridge University.
He currently serves as the UK’s Independent Advisor to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General and President of the Court of Appeal of the British Indian Ocean Territories, training judges in Iraq and Ukraine on war crimes cases and lecturing worldwide on international criminal and humanitarian law. He is a special advisor to the UK Ministry of Defence on the laws of armed conflict and a Master of the Bench of Gray’s Inn.
Patrick Hayford
Patrick Hayford is a retired Ghanaian career diplomat with five decades of experience in international diplomacy mainly on multilateral issues.
Between 2006 and 2012 he served at the United Nations headquarters Secretariat in New York as the Director , Office of the Special Adviser on Africa before which time he was the Director for Africa and Regional Affairs in the Executive Office of United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan (1999-2005 ).
Ambassador Hayford served between 1996 and 1997 as Ghana’s Acting High Commissioner (Ambassador), to the U.K. and then as Ghana’s High Commissioner (Ambassador) to South Africa, Mauritius, Lesotho, the Comoros, and the Seychelles (1997-1999).
His career in international affairs began in September, 1974 . He also served tours of duty in New York and in Cairo. At the Accra headquarters of Ghana’s Foreign Ministry he held multiple responsibilities including head of the International Organizations and Conferences Department.
Stephen Rapp
Stephen J. Rapp is a leading figure in international accountability, having served as the fourth United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, leading the Office of Global Criminal Justice from 2009 to 2015 under President Obama.
He previously served as Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) from 2007 to 2009 and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 2001 to 2007.
At the ICTR, Rapp led the prosecution in the Nahimana case, securing the first convictions of media figures for direct and public incitement to genocide, and he also led the prosecution at the SCSL of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. His prosecutorial approach is recognised for its victim-centred strategy and for advancing the recognition of sexual and gender-based violence as an international crime.
Since 2015 he has held a portfolio of academic and advisory roles, including Global Prevention Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Senior Fellow at Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security, Fellow of Practice of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict, Distinguished Fellow at the Hague Institute for Global Justice, and Chair of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA).
Nina Jørgensen
Professor Nina Jørgensen is a British and Norwegian academic and sitting international judge whose career bridges scholarship and international criminal justice.
She has served as Professor of Public International Law at the University of Southampton since 2019 and as a Judge on the Appeals Chamber of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague since 2020. She is a barrister in England and Wales, called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1999.
Her career of approximately twenty-five years spans international criminal tribunals including the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the ICTY and the ICTR, alongside academic posts at Leiden University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Southampton. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Oxford and has published widely in international law, including two monographs, an edited collection and numerous peer-reviewed articles.
Pascal Turlan
Pascal Turlan is a French international lawyer with over 25 years of experience in international criminal justice, international human rights law, and international cooperation. A leading expert in international criminal law, he has dedicated his career to advancing justice and accountability on the global stage.
Based in The Hague, he spent nearly two decades at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), rising from Situation Analyst to Adviser and Head of Judicial Cooperation, and began working on the Democratic Republic of the Congo situation as early as 2003.
Earlier in his career, he played a pivotal role in establishing international justice mechanisms, including working at the French Ministry of Justice and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Justice, where he contributed to the setting up of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and in humanitarian contexts, collaborating with Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde.
In recent years, he has served as Legal and Programme Director for Project Expedite Justice’s Ukraine programme. Currently, he combines high-level consultancy work on accountability and justice sector reform with organizations such as the International Development Law Organization, the EU Pravo-Justice project, and Truth Hounds International, with academic roles at Sciences Po Paris and France’s École Nationale de la Magistrature.