Vanessa Murphy is a Legal Adviser at the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. Her present work focuses, among other issues, on the protection of the environment in armed conflict and she is a co-author of the ICRC’s updated Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict. Her other thematic files include the protection of children, access to education, sexual violence, and gender in armed conflict. Prior to joining the ICRC in 2016, she worked at AO Advocates, a UK-based law firm specializing in litigation for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and at Hestia, a UK NGO delivering support services for victims of sexual violence and human-trafficking. Her professional experience also includes work for the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces, Human Rights Now, and the International Criminal Law Media Review.

She holds an LLM in international humanitarian law from the Geneva Academy, a Graduate Diploma of Law in the UK, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Studies from Yale University.