Dr Amrita Kapur

Amrita Kapur

Secretary General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Dr Amrita Kapur is Secretary General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the world’s oldest women’s peace organisation. In this role, she leads the organisation’s global strategy and advocacy, representing WILPF in high-level international forums, and working with members in over 40 countries to advance feminist peace, challenge militarism, and ensure women’s voices shape decision-making on conflict prevention, disarmament, and justice. She oversees organisational leadership, partnerships, and governance, and steers programmes connecting grassroots movements with global policy processes.
A global leader in advancing gender equality, women’s rights, and inclusive peace, Dr Kapur has over 14 years’ experience across conflict, crisis, and transitional contexts. Her work bridges peacebuilding, international criminal justice, humanitarian and human rights law, grounded in a feminist leadership approach that values collaboration, consensus-building, and shared power. She is recognised for her deep technical expertise on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and for embedding gender perspectives into institutional reform and peace processes.
Her career includes senior roles with the United Nations, international NGOs, and academic institutions, directing large-scale multi-country programmes, advising on gender-sensitive justice reform, and shaping policy for governments, UN bodies, and civil society in Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Colombia, Honduras, Myanmar, and Timor-Leste. She has extensive experience in capacity-building for justice and security actors, monitoring judicial responses to gender-based crimes, and designing reforms to strengthen women’s rights protections.
Dr Kapur’s publications span practitioner resources, peer-reviewed scholarship, book chapters, and opinion pieces, reflecting her ability to translate research into practice and influence policy debates. Her work covers topics from gender-responsive criminal justice and CRSV accountability to enforced disappearances and the gendered impacts of conflict.
She holds a PhD in Law from the University of New South Wales, an LL.M in International Law from New York University, and a combined BSc (Psychology Hons) / LL.B (Hons equivalent) from UNSW. Her doctoral research examined the role of ICC preliminary examinations in catalysing national prosecutions of CRSV, informed by fieldwork in Colombia and Guinea.
Dr Kapur’s career is defined by her commitment to embedding gender justice in peace and security, shaping both international norms and national reforms. She brings together legal scholarship, policy innovation, and on-the-ground experience to address urgent and complex challenges in conflict-affected contexts, building pathways toward more inclusive, accountable, and equitable systems.