Transnational Law Institute Hosts Lecture on Post-Genocide Rwanda
On Tuesday, April 1, Washington and Lee School of Law will host Notre Dame professor Luc Reydams, who will speak on his paper “Let’s be Friends: The United States, Post-Genocide Rwanda, and Victor’s Justice in Arusha.
The talk is scheduled for 2 p.m. in Classroom C, Sydney Lewis Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
In this paper, Reydams examines whether the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was doomed from the start to be a court of ‘victor’s justice.’ He has conducted interviews with (former) U.S. and U.N. ambassadors and examined hundreds of declassified diplomatic telegrams (‘cables’) and intelligence reports of the U.S. Department of State to shed new light on this process. Reydams argues that once Washington entered into a partnership with the ‘new’ Rwanda, it was committed to moving forward – and this implied burying the past and often times also ignoring the present.
Reydams’ talk is sponsored by the Transnational Law Institute and the W&L Politics department. In addition to the talk, Reydams will appear on WLUR with Prof. Larry Boetsch, director of the Center for International Education at W&L, and two W&L law students to discuss the 20th Anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
Reydams was educated in Belgium and the U.S. He teaches at Notre Dame and the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland). He has published three books: “Universal Jurisdiction: International and Municipal Legal Perspectives” (Oxford University Press 2003), “International Prosecutors” (Oxford University Press 2012), and the “Global Activism Reader” (Continuum Publishing 2011). The paper he will present is part of his new book project “The Politics of International Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa (1994-2014).”
