Dr. Jelena Palmenac
Dr. Jelena Palmenac is an international humanitarian lawyer with over 15 years’ experience in practicing humanitarian and human rights law in international criminal justice systems and humanitarian organisations. She currently serves as Coordinator and International Humanitarian Law/Armed Groups Expert for the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011). From 2017 to 2021, Jelena also served as an international humanitarian law expert madated to provide legal advice to key humanitarian and diplomatic actors responding to armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa region. Her work focused on enhancing the protection of civilians in armed conflicts, including in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya.
Prior to her regional mandate, she served for almost 10 years at the Offices of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. There she was responsible for legal analysis of serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in situations under the Prosecutor’s preliminary examination. During her time at the ICC, she was a member of the working groups on the Prosecutor’s Policy on Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes, and the Policy on Children.
Jelena holds a Ph.D. in law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva. Her book Unravelling Unlawful Confinement in Contemporary Armed Conflicts (Brill, 2021) has won the prestigious 2022 Francis Lieber Prize awarded by the American Society of International Law for an exceptional book in the field of the law of armed conflict.