Speaker details

Biography

Her Honour Judge Sylvia de Bertodano Sylvia de Bertodano was called to the Bar in 1993. She specialized in national and international criminal law, and worked on a number of war crimes trials. She was instructed as junior counsel in Prosecutor v Tadic, the first trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1995. She was counsel in cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the East Timor Special Panels. She advised the East Timor government of accession to and implementing legislation for the Rome Statue for the International Criminal Court (ICC), and worked as legal expert for East Timor at many sessions of the Preparatory Commission for the ICC at UNHQ in New York. She drafted an amicus curiae brief for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on behalf of UNICEF on the recruitment of child soldiers as a war crime. She was a member of the panel of experts organized by the International Bar Association (IBA) to assist in drafting a Code of Conduct for Defence Counsel at the ICC. She has trained judges and lawyers from many countries for the IBA, including the judges of the Iraq Special Tribunal. She has written extensively about international criminal law in a number of Oxford University Press (OUP) publications, and was a founder member of the editorial committee of OUP’s Journal of International Criminal Justice. She co authored a book on non-judical accountability mechanisms published by No Peace Without Justice. In 2009 she was appointed Circuit Judge, and in 2021 she was appointed Deputy High Court Judge.