Law school team documents work of International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Fifteen years ago, the Rwandan genocide left more than 800,000 people dead in the span of 100 days. Of those who survived, nearly everyone was a perpetrator, a victim, or a relative of one or the other.

For the first time, a group of researchers, including a legal team from the School of Law, documented the work through the words of judges, attorneys and administrators of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. They talked about the emotional and ambitious project at a panel at the law school, Achieving Justice After Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Tribunal.”

Among the questions the project posed were “What does ‘justice’ mean in such a setting? How can justice be achieved? Can retributive justice, restorative justice, and reconciliation be achieved by a single tribunal?

Showing clips of their video interviews discussing the project were Professor Ron Slye, Professor from Practice John McKay, former Judge Don Horowitz and special guest Angeline Djampou, chief of the Legal Library and Reference Section at the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. Several Seattle University law students, who supported the project by preparing background memoranda to brief the interviewers, talked about their participation.

Djampou discussed the impact the video interviews and other resources can have in strengthening the legal/judicial system of Rwanda, in bringing sustained peace to the country, and in improving future tribunals.

Slye, McKay, and Horowitz were part of a multidisciplinary team from Seattle that traveled to the ICTR last fall as part of a project to interview participants and record their experiences and insights about the work of the tribunal. The ICTR Heritage Project, a joint effort of the University of Washington Information School and the Seattle University School of Law, is just one of the many ways lawyers and law students are working to promote justice around the globe.