Editor Derek MacCuish has a new interview in the Pathways to Peace series of our podcast Human Rights Magazine. Stephen Rapp is widely respected for his decades of work for justice and accountability in areas of conflict and war crimes.
In 2001, he joined the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as part of the effort to prosecute those responsible for the genocide of 1994, and he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history for those in the media who incited genocide. He directed the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and others responsible for crimes during more than ten years of extreme violence in the Sierra Leone Civil War. As U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for war crimes issues, his office achieved the first convictions in history for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, and for attacks on peacekeepers and the use of child soldiers as violations of international humanitarian law.
He has been engaged in efforts for justice and accountability in dozens of countries, most recently in Syria where, he said, the worst atrocities of the 21st century were committed. I started our discussion by asking him about how a condition of peace might be achieved in a place where people have suffered from extreme violence.
