Sévane Garibian

Sévane Garibian is Professor in International Criminal Law and Transitional Justice at the University of Geneva and Adjunct Professor in Legal Philosophy at the University of Neuchâtel.

She is also an Associate Researcher at the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (EHESS/CNRS, Paris) and a member of the scientific council of the Association Francophone de Justice Transitionnelle (AFJT). She was a member of the European Research Council research programme ‘Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide’ (ERC Consolidator Grant 2012-2016).

Professor Garibian also led the SNSF-funded research programme Right to Truth, Truth(s) through Rights: Mass Crimes Impunity and Transitional Justice at the University of Geneva (2016-2022). She has also published numerous papers and contributions to anthologies, as well as books and co-edited volumes.

Her work focuses mainly on the forms, meanings and functions of law in relation to State-sponsored crimes, and explores plural justice mechanisms (traditional / alternative, judicial/extrajudicial, international/national). She is particularly interested in the relationship between law, history, science, memory and truth in the legal treatment of contemporary mass crimes and of their traces and legacies, their denial and their memorialization. She also initiates work on the legal status of human remains and the law of the dead. Since 2018, she has been associated, together with her team, with the ICRC Missing Persons Project as a scientific consultant for the drafting of Guiding Principles for the Dignified Management of the Dead in Humanitarian Emergencies and to Prevent them Becoming Missing Persons.

Prior to joining the University of Geneva, Professor Garibian was an SNSF post-doctoral research fellow and a visiting fellow at the University of Buenos Aires and Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. She holds a PhD from the Universities of Paris X and Geneva.