AUK Talks with Ambassador Stephen Rapp _ February 21, 2024

The AUK Talks topic: "The Necessity of Justice for Russia's Crimes Against Ukraine"
About AUK Talks speaker:
Ambassador Stephen Rapp is a former US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, former International Prosecutor at the Tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone. He is a Chair of the Board of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, and a Senior Visiting Fellow of Practice with the Blavatnik School’s Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict’s Programme on International Peace and Security. At the Blavatnik School, he is co-leading a new research and stakeholder consultation project to develop policy proposals to strengthen global capacity to gather and preserve evidence of criminal responsibility of the most serious violations of human rights. He also currently serves as Distinguished Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide.
From 2009 to 2015, Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp served as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. Department of State. Prior to his appointment, he served as Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone beginning in January 2007, leading the prosecutions of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and other persons alleged to bear the greatest responsibility for the atrocities committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone. During his tenure, his office achieved the first convictions in history for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, and for attacks on peacekeepers and for recruitment and use of child soldiers as violations of international humanitarian law.
From 2001 to 2007, Mr. Rapp served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, personally heading the trial team that achieved convictions of the principals of RTLM radio and Kangura newspaper - the first in history for leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide.
Mr. Rapp was United States Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa from 1993 to 2001, where his office won historic convictions under the firearms provision of the Violence Against Women Act and the serious violent offender provision of the 1994 Crime Act. Prior to his tenure as U.S. Attorney, he worked as an attorney in private practice and served as Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and as an elected member of the Iowa Legislature. He received his BA degree from Harvard College, attended Columbia and Drake Law Schools, and received his JD degree from Drake.
Learn more about American University Kyiv: auk.edu.ua/en/