Oksana Senatorova

Dr Oksana Senatorova is a Ukrainian lawyer, specialising in international humanitarian law (IHL), international criminal law (ICL), international human rights law (IHRL)and transitional justice (TJ). She is the Director of the Research Centre for Transitional Justice (RCTJ), and an Associate Professor at the Department of International Law at the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University. She has 20 years of experience teaching IL, IHL, ICL and TJ courses. In 2020 she founded and directed the NGO “Centre for IHL and Transitional Justice” to protect and promote the rights of victims of armed conflicts. Since June 2023 she is a Legal and Policy Advisor at Geneva Call, Ukriane.

Since 2019 she has been a member of the Commission on Legal Reform of Ukraine under the President of Ukraine (developing the TJ Legal Framework within it), a member of the Advisory Board of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) and an advisor to the Ombudsman’s Special Report, a Coordinator of the Working Group on the Protection of Victims of Armed Conflict of the Interdepartmental Commission on the Implementation of IHL in Ukraine, an expert at the International Council on Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict at Office of Prosecutor General, member of the Methodological Council of the National School of Judges of Ukraine. In 2006-2009 she worked with the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine on the drafting of legal acts aimed at adapting of Ukrainian legislation to the EU acquis communautaire, since 2015 in the IHL Commission drafting legal acts implementing IHL and IHRL.

Since 2005 she has been an expert for the ICRC Regional Delegations; since 2021 – a peer reviewer for the ICRC Commentary on the 1949 Geneva Convention IV. In 2021-2022 she was an expert for the Council of Europe, since February 2023 she is an expert for the EU-funded Project “Pravo-Justice”. In June 2022 – May 2023, Dr Senatorova was a visiting fellow of the Working Group “Observations, documentation and analysis of human rights, humanitarian, and international criminal law violations on the territory of Ukraine” at the Leibniz IOS. Since March 2022, she is a co-founder of the Foundation Sunflowers.

In 2022-2023 she published on the issues of creation of the Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression, protection of the victims of aggression, deportation of children and the avenues of prosecution of war crimes committed during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.