OVERVIEW

As a founding director of Partners in Justice International, Ms. Marcus centers her practice on providing technical support to local practitioners, partnering with them in their cases to help them ensure accountability for international crimes in their own countries’ courts.

BIOGRAPHY

Maxine Marcus is an international criminal prosecutor and investigator with 23 years’ field-based and courtroom-based experience in international criminal law. Her field work includes Chad (for Darfur), Sierra Leone, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Hungary, Kosovo, Ingushetia/Chechnya, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia (Gambella), Guinea, Kenya, South Sudan, South Korea (for DPRK), the Philippines, and Guatemala. She served for nine years as a prosecuting attorney at the ICTY on four cases, including the Mladic Case. From 2003 to 2005, Ms. Marcus served as investigating attorney for the Civil Defence Forces prosecution team in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In November and December 2009, Ms. Marcus served on the UN Commission of Inquiry for Guinea as the Gender and International Criminal Law Adviser, and from April to June 2014 she served as Senior International Criminal Law and Gender Adviser to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office on their Prevention of Sexual Violence Initiative, and as Senior International Criminal Law Advisor to the UK Protocol on Documentation of Sexual Violence in Conflict. From December 2014 to March 2015, Ms. Marcus was senior SGBV advisor to the OHCHR Fact Finding Mission for Sri Lanka, and from July to December 2015, she served as Senior Legal Investigator to the UN Secretary General’s External Panel on Sexual Abuse by International Forces in the Central African Republic.

Ms. Marcus is a long time faculty member of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.

LEGAL EXPERTISE

  • International criminal law and customary international law, torture, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, conflict-related sexual violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, cold cases.
  • International criminal investigations, complex criminal investigations.
  • Evidence in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide cases.
  • Gap Analysis for mass criminal cases.  
  • Proof of grave crimes, including in the absence of forensic evidence.
  • Creative strategies for investigation of sexual violence crimes, including informal security measures for investigators.
  • Litigation: Special Court for Sierra Leone and International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 

COUNTRY-SPECIFIC EXPERTISE

  • Chad (for Darfur)
    • Darfur Documentation Project
  • Central African Republic
    • UN Secretary General’s External Panel on Sexual Abuse by International Forces in the Central African Republic
  • Democratic People’s Republic of Korea(DPRK)
    • Accompaniment. Assisted South Korean civil society organisation engaged in documentation and investigation of alleged crimes against humanity committed in DPRK
  • Guinea
    • Protection work for refugees from Sierra Leone, with UNHCR and IRC
    • Legal Advisor to the UN Commission of Inquiry for Guinea
    • Pre-mentoring evaluation, assessing and supporting the process of establishing a criminal trial process for the stadium massacre of 2009, with INL
  • Sierra Leone
    • Investigations. Criminal investigator, CDF Prosecution Team
  • Bosnia-Hercegovina
    • Investigations. Led war-crimes related investigations for Human Rights Watch
  • Kosovo
    • Accompaniment. Multiple deployments to Kosovo with UN Women to provide advisory mentoring to prosecutors, investigators, and victim lawyers in relation to specific cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, including those involving sexual violence
  • Ingushetia (for Chechnya)
    • Investigations. Carried out war-crimes related investigations for Human Rights Watch
  • Ivory Coast
    • Investigations. Led war-crimes related investigations for Human Rights Watch
  • Ethiopia
    • Investigations. Led investigations into human rights violations against minority communities on the Ethiopian/Sudan border, for UNICEF
  • Kenya
    • Accompaniment. Partnering with national justice practitioners on investigation and preparation of court-ready case dossiers involving serious human rights violations by law enforcement
  • Rwanda
    • Aegis Trust Board of Directors and Advisor to the Board
  • Guatemala
    • Accompaniment. Multiple deployments to Guatemala with multiple organizations to provide advisory mentoring to prosecutors and analysts  in the Internal Armed Conflict unit (CAI; for its initials in Spanish), along with relevant victim lawyers, in relation to specific cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, including sexual violence crimes
  • Sri Lanka
    • OHCHR Fact Finding Mission for Sri Lanka
  • Tunisia
    • Accompaniment. Multiple deployments to Tunisia with UN Women to provide advisory mentoring to investigators for Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission in relation to specific cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, including those involving sexual violence
  • South Sudan
    • Expert consultant on methodology for the UN Commission on Human Rights for South Sudan
    • Member, Justice Advisory Group for South Sudan, Ferencz International Justice Initiative, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

ACCOLADES

  • Honoree on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall at the ICC
  • 2018 recipient of the Prominent Women in International Law Award by the American Society of International Law.

EDUCATION

  • Brooklyn Law School, J.D., 2001
  • Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, Master of International Affairs, Human Rights, 1995
  • Barnard College, Columbia University, B.A. Political Science, French, 1992

ADMISSIONS

  • NY State Bar

LANGUAGES

  • English: Native Fluency (mother tongue)
  • Spanish, Professional Proficiency
  • French, Professional Proficiency
  • Dutch, Intermediate Proficiency
  • Hungarian, Intermediate Proficiency
  • Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, Conversational

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS