Elisabeth Pramendorfer

Elisabeth Pramendorfer is an atrocity prevention expert with extensive experience advocating for populations at risk of atrocity crimes at the United Nations (UN). She is the Geneva Director at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the world’s leading research and advocacy organization advancing the international norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the UN and beyond, working to prevent genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing worldwide.

Elisabeth represents the Global Centre at the Human Rights Council, where she has institutionalized and expanded the Centre’s work on atrocity prevention within the wider UN human rights system. She has spent the past decade designing and implementing advocacy strategies and working with senior government officials to mobilize multilateral action to prevent and respond to atrocity crises worldwide. She has also led the development of the Global Centre’s work with UN investigative mechanisms and oversees the Centre’s engagement with the Group of Friends of R2P – an intergovernmental group of more than 55 cross-regional UN Member States.

Elisabeth is the author of articles, book chapters, op-eds and commentaries on R2P and atrocity prevention and regularly speaks on multilateralism, human rights and related topics before parliaments, think-tanks, NGOs and government institutions. Since 2021, she has contributed as a guest lecturer at academic institutions worldwide, including New York Times Summer School, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, McGill University Canada, University of Geneva, Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, Florida International University, as well as universities in Croatia, Venezuela and Ecuador.

She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Every Casualty Counts, a UK-based civil society organization supporting effective recording of casualties of armed violence worldwide. She holds an LLM in International Humanitarian Law from the Geneva Academy and degrees from Sciences Po, Paris, SOAS and King’s College London.