Christie J. Edwards, JD, LLM is an internationally recognized and published legal expert with over twenty-five years of experience working on international humanitarian and human rights law, gender, international policy and advocacy, and civilian protection. Christie has led successful non-profit management and humanitarian implementation programs, strategic planning, and grants management in senior leadership and management roles at national and international levels with prominent humanitarian and multilateral organizations such as Geneva Call, the American Red Cross, and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). Christie has also worked at a torture treatment clinic for political refugees, served as counsel for asylum seekers, managed and implemented women’s human rights, political advocacy, and civil society building programs in the MENA region following the Arab Spring, and taught courses on International Human Rights, Gender and Conflict, and Women, Rights, & Gender Equality as an Adjunct Professor at GWU Elliott School of International Affairs and Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She currently teaches a summer course on Women and International Human Rights Law at AU Washington College of Law (AU WCL).

Christie serves on the Executive Council and Executive Committee of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), Co-Chairs ASIL’s DEI Working Group, and is the Co-Chair for the inaugural ASIL Abroad Meeting which will be held in Geneva in 2024. She Co-Chaired the 2021 ASIL Annual Meeting and co-founded ASIL’s Women’s Mentoring Program for over 900 participants worldwide. She is also a member of the Committee for the Jean-Pictet Competition (CCJP) which organizes the renown Jean-Pictet IHL Moot Court Competition, a member of the AU WCL War Crimes Research Office Alumni Advisory Board, and a member of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform Advisory Board.

She received her JD from Thomas Jefferson School of Law, focused on international human rights law, and her LLM from AU Washington College of Law, with dual specializations in gender and international human rights. Christie has published law review articles on forced contraception as a form of torture, the cultural context of sex trafficking in China, the use of gender budget analysis to achieve educational parity for women and girls, legal advocacy strategies for women’s rights in Morocco, and ISIL’s use of forced contraception as a form of torture. Her latest law review article on “Addressing Misogynistic Violence as an Early Warning Indicator of Escalating Violence and Armed Conflict” was published in January 2023. She also speaks regularly for local and international conferences on international human rights and humanitarian law issues.