The CMN co-ordination team

Director
Ilia Utmelidze is the Director of the CMN. He has been involved in the full spectrum of CMN activities, including numerous missions to countries around the world and development of CMN tools and services. He is a Senior Legal Adviser at the National Human Rights Institutions, the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo. He is also advising the Norwegian Helsinki Committee on methodologies and tools for documentation of mass atrocities. Formerly, he served as Legal Adviser in the Human Rights Department of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, advising on transitional justice and institution-building in areas such as domestic war crimes prosecution mechanisms (including the development of a national strategy for war crimes prosecution), specialized investigative commissions for Srebrenica and Sarajevo, and the reform of ombudsman institution. He has also worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Azerbaijan with capacity building of local non-governmental organizations in the field of human rights protection and advocacy; as a consultant on development of human rights education and peace programmes within the educational system of Azerbaijan (2001-04); and for the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights on a minority policy and law research project (2000-01). Originally from Georgia, Utmelidze is a Norwegian citizen with a family of four children in Oslo. He is fluent in English, Georgian and Russian, also speaks Norwegian and Bosnian, Serbo-Croatian. 

Deputy Director
Emilie Hunter is responsible for the EU grant, ‘Enhancing the Rome Statute System of Justice: Supporting National Ownership of Criminal Justice Procedures through Technology-driven Services.’ She specializes in the application of positive complementarity in post conflict and transitional countries. As a CMN Senior Advisor, Emilie has delivered in-depth training to justice actors, including the Ugandan War Crimes Divisions of the High Court, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Courts’ of Colombia and México, Public Prosecution Services in Guatemala, Colombia and México and several National Human Rights Institutes. Outside of the CMN, Emilie has provided research for parties undergoing ICC admissibility challenges and has been a litigant in universal jurisdiction cases. She has eight years experience of implementing capacity building and technical assistance projects in criminal and transitional justice, working for UNOPS in Iraq and for the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre where she oversaw the creation and development of the National Implementing Legislation Database (NILD) of the ICC Legal Tools Project (2005-2009). Emilie was Researcher at the European University Institute and Co-Convener of its International Criminal Law Working Group (2009-2013). During this time she was fortunate to spend a semester at New York University (2011). She expects to submit her Doctoral thesis in 2013. She lives in Italy, and speaks English, Spanish and Italian.

Deputy Director (ICL)
Dr. Olympia Bekou is Professor and Head of the International Criminal Justice Unit of the Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre. A qualified lawyer, she specialises in international criminal law with particular expertise in national implementing legislation for the ICC. Olympia has provided research and capacity building support for 63 States, through intensive training to more than 75 international government officials and drafting assistance to Samoa (with legislation enacted in November 2007), Fiji and Jamaica. She is responsible for the National Implementing Legislation Database (NILD) of the ICC Legal Tools Project and has researched and taught extensively worldwide.