Anne-Marie de Brouwer

Anne-Marie de Brouwer (@AMdeBrouwer) is co-founder and team member of IMPACT (@impctnow), an organization based in The Netherlands that works to prevent and address human trafficking and conflict-related sexual violence. She is an award-winning author and humanitarian.

She is also co-founder and the Chair of the Mukomeze Foundation, which improves the lives of survivors of genocidal sexual violence during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. In addition, she is co-owner of Bèkske: Rwandan Empowerment Coffee, which supports Rwandan female coffee entrepreneurs.

In 2020, Anne-Marie and her colleague at Impact, Eefje de Volder, set up the Journal of Human Trafficking, Enslavement and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, with Paris Legal Publishers.

Anne-Marie was a research fellow with the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT) at Tilburg University, where she was an associate professor of international criminal law 2008-2016. She conducted doctoral research on conflict-related sexual violence and international criminal law.

Her PhD, Supranational Criminal Prosecution of Sexual Violence: The ICC and the Practice of the ICTY and the ICTR (Oxford-Antwerp: Intersentia, 2005), was awarded the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award 2006. It is widely cited as a reference for understanding the investigation and prosecution of conflict-related sexual violence by researchers and practitioners.

This similarly applies to her co-edited volumes, Sexual Violence as an International Crime: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Intersentia, 2013), The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence (Douglas & McIntyre, 2009) as well as And I Live On: The Resilience of Rwandan Genocide Survivors of Sexual Violence (Wolf Legal Publishers, 2019), available as an epublication.

Two other notable publications are:
Anne-Marie de Brouwer and Alette Smeulers (eds.), ELGAR Companion to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2016.

Anne-Marie de Brouwer, Eefje de Volder and Christophe Paulussen, ‘Prosecuting the Nexus between Terrorism, Human Trafficking and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence before National Courts: Case Studies of Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab’ (2020) (18:2) Journal of International Criminal Justice, 499-516.

In more than a decade of working on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, with an international and interdisciplinary approach, Anne-Marie has carried out a wide array of research, teaching, training, and empowerment projects, including within/for academia, (international) courts, governments, international organisations, and NGOs.

In 2013, she received the Viva400-Award for young inspirational women in the Netherlands, for her efforts to improve women’s health. She was awarded a high Royal distinction in 2013 – “Ridder” (“Dame”) in the Order of Oranje-Nassau for her academic and societal work on conflict-related sexual violence.

She served as an associate legal officer at the NGO Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice in The Hague 2006-2007 and was a PhD researcher and Assistant Professor in international criminal law (2000-2005/2005-2006) at the Department of European and International Public Law at Tilburg University.

Anne-Marie studied Dutch Law, International Law and International Human Rights Law at Tilburg University, La Sapienza and the University of Essex.

Her media experience includes TV, magazines, newspapers, and radio.