Too Little, Too Late: The U.S. Role in Establishing the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Zachary D. Kaufman is a CDDRL pre-doctoral fellow in the academic year 2005-2006. Mr. Kaufman is completing his DPhil (PhD) in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he is a Marshall Scholar and he is writing a dissertation on U.S. policy on the establishment of war crimes tribunals. Afterwards, he will attend Yale Law School. Mr. Kaufman is also currently co-editing (with Dr. Phil Clark) a forthcoming book on transitional justice, post-conflict reconstruction, and reconciliation in Rwanda since the 1994 genocide.

Mr. Kaufman's professional experience has focused on the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of suspected perpetrators of atrocities, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and terrorism. He has served at the United States Departments of State and Justice, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Court.

Mr. Kaufman is also the founder, president, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Friends of the Kigali Public Library; co-founder and Executive Director of Marshall Scholars for the Kigali Public Library; and honorary member of the Rotary Club of Kigali-Virunga, Rwanda. Together, these three non-profit organizations are fundraising and collecting books for, raising public awareness about, and building Rwanda's first public library, the Kigali Public Library. Mr. Kaufman is also a Board Member and Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action, which, in order to engage student leaders in the study and work of human rights, sponsors an integrated set of education programs and internships for university students in Europe and the United States.

In 2004, Mr. Kaufman received his M.Phil (Master's) degree in International Relations from the University of Oxford. In 2000, Mr. Kaufman received his B.A. (Bachelor's) degree in Political Science from Yale University.

Mr. Kaufman's talk will discuss U.S. participation in establishing a UN-backed international war crimes tribunal for addressing the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The origin of the ICTR is complicated and controversial because of the number, attractiveness, and precedence of alternative mechanisms, as well as the pitfalls of establishing such a tribunal. Given the extent, recency, and persistence of atrocities, Mr. Kaufman's research is crucially relevant to academic and policy discussions in the post-9/11 world.