Speaker details

Biography

Elsa Wyllie works on both sides of the hardest cases: defending people accused of atrocity crimes and grave criminal offences, and representing victims and complainants in criminal and human rights proceedings. Across international tribunals and Canadian trial and appellate courts, her work turns on the same questions: the rights of the accused, the place of victims, and the fairness of the process. From 2027, she will also practise from London with Lewis Power KC at Furnival Chambers. Her international work is rooted in field experience. Before law, she managed returnee camps and reintegrated demobilised soldiers in post-genocide Rwanda for the UNDP, and researched pre-traumatic stress in people acting under duress during genocide. She now acts in Rwanda matters before the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, as counsel with Kate Gibson for Prosper Mugiraneza and as counsel for François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye. She also advocates before UN Security Council missions and UN Special Procedures for IRMCT acquitted and released persons stranded in Niger. She has co-drafted Article 15 communications for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and has completed the Court’s Rule 74 counsel training. In British Columbia, Elsa appears in the BC Supreme Court and Provincial Court, defending serious charges including murder and sexual offences, and acting as complainant counsel in sexual violence matters. She has acted as intervenor counsel in appellate cases, including before the Supreme Court of Canada for the Trial Lawyers Association of BC in R v Nahanee, 2022 SCC 37, on sentencing fairness for Indigenous and marginalised accused. She represents clients before the BC Human Rights Tribunal and supervises the UBC Law Innocence Project. She is a partner at Arendt Chambers in Vancouver and an Associate Member of Church Court Chambers in London. Elsa serves as Events Officer for the IBA War Crimes Committee and co-chaired its annual Hague conference in 2025 and 2026. She has trained Ukrainian defence counsel in international humanitarian and criminal law through the IBA/USAID Ukraine Defence Counsel Training Project. She also sits on the Bar Issues Committee Working Group on the Crimes Against Humanity Convention and judges the IBA/ICC Moot Court Competition. She speaks and writes on state sovereignty, media freedom, and the evolving international legal order. Recent work includes research for Columbia’s High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom and “Legitimacy Foreclosed?” (with Kate McInnes, Opinio Juris, 2026).