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Rwanda & Transitional Justice Colloquium

Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity: Cautionary Lessons from Post-Genocide Rwanda

Friday, 14 October 2005
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
66 W. 12th Street, Room 510
Reception to follow, 9th floor

Rwanda has embarked on the most ambitious experiment in transitional justice ever attempted: 110,000 lay judges are trying genocide cases in more than 10,000 gacaca (community) courts. Gacaca, which is inspired by Rwanda’s customary dispute resolution, offers important cautionary lessons for adapting local practices to provide justice and reconciliation in the wake of mass atrocity. The subject is especially timely given the United Nations Secretary General’s recognition of traditional dispute resolution for promoting transitional justice and the ICC Prosecutor’s recent deference to local reconciliation practices in northern Uganda.

Lars Waldorf is project leader at The New School's World Policy Institute. Before coming to The New School Waldorf was a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program (2004-05.) Prior to that, he ran the Human Rights Watch field office in Rwanda (2002-04) and covered genocide trials at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2001.) He has been observing gacaca proceedings in Rwanda since they began in 2002 and is writing a book on gacaca with support from the United States Institute of Peace.

Lars received a B.A. magna cum laude (1985) from Harvard College and a J.D. (1989) from Harvard Law School. After clerking for the New Jersey Supreme Court (1991-92), he worked at Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles and the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights as a Skadden Fellow (1992-94). He was a senior trial attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice in Washington, DC (1994-99). He has also taught at The New School and Harvard College.

Posted by Scott on Friday, October 07, 2005 at 11:45 AM |