Reception Honors Book, Accountability for Atrocities

At a reception on October 27, Law Center faculty and students celebrated the publication of Accountability for Atrocities: National and International Responses, published by Transnational Publishers and edited by Professor Jane Stromseth. This collection of essays examines critical challenges in achieving accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

     At the reception, following an introduction by Associate Dean Alex Aleinikoff, Stromseth was quick to praise the work of Law Center students who contributed essays to the book, several of whom were present at the event. Among the attendees were David Tallman (L’03), who contributed a key chapter on Belgium’s prosecution of war crimes under its universal jurisdiction law; Elizabeth Keyes (3L), who co-authored a chapter about Rwanda; and Avril Haines (L’01), now working at the Legal Advisor’s Office at the U.S. Department of State, who wrote a chapter about Sierra Leone. The book also looks at accountability cases in Argentina, Cambodia, East Timor, El Salvador, Indonesia, and the former Yugoslavia.

    As Stromseth explained, much of the impetus for the book came out of Stromseth’s Georgetown Law seminar on the Use of Force, which prompted an interest on the part of a number of students in researching and writing about accountability for atrocities during times of armed conflict. Under Stromseth’s guidance, contributors worked with similar themes and a common outline to develop case studies. Each chapter in the book presents the facets around a given set of human rights violations: the context behind them, the goals and methods used in pursuing accountability for them, the kinds of collaboration that supported prosecution of the cases, and the varying levels of success achieved.
    At Stromseth’s invitation, Elizabeth Keyes presented highlights of the chapter that she co-authored with Jason Strain (L’03), explaining that Rwanda presented an unusually challenging genocide case that left no corner of the society untouched. In the aftermath of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, national and international parties seeking accountability had to find ways to collaborate with local communities. Keyes described a system in which people were tried by their peers in the specific community where atrocities were carried out. The government was able to replicate this system elsewhere, promoting the twin goals of efficiency and reconciliation as well as overcoming disputed concerns such as when to use the death penalty.
     Stromseth said that although each case treated in the book is unique, taken together they generate new collective wisdom in the field. She pointed to one of the book’s central lessons: “The arrival of the International Criminal Court must not obscure the fundamental need for continuing to support national accountability efforts. In the end, the national level is where effective deterrence and accountability is most sorely needed.”