By: Iva Vukusic,
International Judicial Monitor
Correspondent in The Hague
(After serving as
Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State
Department for six years, Stephen Rapp will now spend the next few months in
The Hague, at the Institute for Global Justice. The residence is part of his
new position at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Simon-Skjodt Center for the
Prevention of Genocide. Rapp’s arrival in The Hague was an opportunity to
discuss some contemporary challenges to accountability for atrocity crimes.)
Stephen Rapp spent years at the
forefront of efforts to end impunity for the most heinous crimes, including
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In his position as
Ambassador-at-Large, he spearheaded efforts of the U.S. government to support
international criminal tribunals, hybrid courts and the International Criminal
Court (ICC) as well as spent much time traveling, meeting with victims of mass
atrocities. Rapp was engaging with governments, international institutions and
civil society with the aim of bringing accountability to some of the most
conflict-ridden places. As former prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra
Leone (SCSL) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), he knows
first-hand about the challenges faced in efforts to prosecute suspects, in
particular those in high positions. Most recently, his work has turned to the
development of practices to improve judicial processes, investigative
commissions and documentation projects.
Rapp will spend his next few
months working on a project with the aim of improving the coordination between
human rights fact-finding in cases of mass atrocity and criminal accountability
efforts, both domestically and internationally. When it comes to using any
information the fact-finding missions gathered in criminal proceedings, Rapp
notes, “it’s very difficult” and gathering documents or forensic analysis of
mass graves is not something commissions of inquiry regularly engage in. In the
criminal justice field, notes Rapp, we learned from experience, that human
memory is frail, and that we need physical evidence. Furthermore, “there is a
proliferation of civil society and non-governmental groups that are engaged in
documentation”, some more closely tied to victims, some more independent, such
as the Human Rights Watch and more recently, the Commission for International
Justice and Accountability (CIJA) which received its funding largely from
governments. The aim of the project is thus to figure out the best use and
sharing of relevant information and the outcome, ideally, will be a “set of
guidelines on how to approach different situations, which could be broadly
accepted and standardized” and come up with a set of best practices.
An important part of Rapp’s work relates
to Syria and achieving a measure of justice for the atrocities committed during
the now five-year long civil war. It is very frustrating, admits Rapp, speaking
to the victims of the Syrian conflict, be it those of the predominant crimes
committed by the regime, or those by so-called Islamic State or a myriad of
other groups. As they “don’t see any prospect for accountability”, those
involved in documentation sometimes wonder if it’s all for nothing, given that
so far, prosecutions of high-ranking officials have been beyond reach. From the
former Yugoslavia to Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia or Chad, arrests and prosecution
of those most responsible are rarely possible before the conflict or the
dictatorship ends and some form of transition begins.
The discussions on justice
options for Syria have often included disputes between those that believe the
ICC should step in, through a Security Council referral (something that failed due
to the veto of Russia and China) and those that champion the idea that a
separate, internationalized tribunal should be established. The former group doesn’t
want to jeopardize the drive to make the ICC universal, while the latter stresses
that the ICC cannot possibly deal