Canterbury Christ Church University presents 'In Conversation With Veronic Wright'

Please click this link, or copy-and-paste this into your browser to access the talk: https:tinyurl.com/veronicwright

Ms. Veronic Wright, from The Gambia, is a Senior Legal Officer with the United Nations Investigative Team for Accountability of Crimes committed by ISIL/Da'esh (UNITAD), in which capacity she leads the investigations into the sexual and gender-based crimes and crimes against children committed by ISIL in Iraq.

Prior to joining UNITAD, she was the Senior Regional Legal Adviser and Head of the Justice Section at the Regional Office for West and Central Africa of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

A graduate of Fourah Bay College, (the oldest University in West Africa), the Nigerian Law School and the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, she started her career as a State Counsel in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, in her home country of The Gambia and rose to the position of Principal State Counsel.

She started her international career in early 1998 when she joined the Commonwealth Secretariat in London as Chief Programme Officer/Legal Adviser in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division dealing with international cooperation in criminal matters within the Commonwealth.

In 2005, she joined the United Nations as a Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. During this time she also worked with the International Commission of Inquiry into the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan (the Bhutto Commission).

In August 2011, she left the ICTR to join the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna, Austria, as Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer. In 2013, she was sent to the UNODC Regional Office for West and Central Africa, located in Dakar Senegal, as Senior Regional Legal Adviser in charge of the Organisation’s Justice programme in the region.

From November 2017, Ms Wright was seconded to the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (UN-IRMCT) in Arusha, Tanzania, as Senior Legal Adviser and Officer-in-Charge, Office of the Prosecutor.

She returned to her position in Senegal in January 2019, to resume her functions, before finally leaning UNODC to join UNITAD in Iraq, in October 2019.