Mrs Fatou Bensouda was the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), between June 2012 and June 2021. In 2011, she was elected by consensus by the Assembly of States Parties to serve in this capacity. Mrs Bensouda was nominated and supported as the sole African candidate for election to the post by the African Union. She is the first woman and first African o serve as the Prosecutor of the ICC.
Under her leadership, Mrs Bensouda has greatly reinforced the capacity of the office through a number of strategic and managerial initiatives and expanded her office’s activities to cover 14 investigations, and countless active preliminary examinations in conflicts around the world.
Through her work, Mrs Bensouda has strived to advance accountability for atrocity crimes, highlighting in particular the importance of addressing traditionally underreported crimes such as sexual and gender-based crimes, mass atrocities against and affecting children, as well as the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage within the Rome Statute framework.
Between 1987 and 2000, Mrs Bensouda was successively Senior State Counsel, Principal State Counsel, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of the Republic of The Gambia, and Attorney General and Minister of Justice of The Republic of The Gambia. Her international career as a non-government civil servant formally began at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she worked as a Legal Adviser and Trial Attorney before rising to the position of Senior Legal Advisor and Head of the Legal Advisory Unit (2002 to 2004), after which she joined the ICC as the Court’s first Deputy Prosecutor. Mrs Bensouda has served as delegate of The Gambia to, inter alia, the meetings of the Preparatory Commission for the ICC.
https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/profile-prosecutor-of-the-international-criminal-court-dr-fatou-bensouda