This book is adapted from my dissertation in the DPhil (PhD) program in International Relations at the University of Oxford. An earlier version of Chapter II was published by invitation in the inaugural issue (2005) of the St. Antony’s International Review, the University of Oxford’s journal of international relations; an earlier version of Chapter V was published by invitation in volume 27 (2013) of the Emory International Law Review; and an earlier version of Chapter VII appeared in After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond, which was originally co-published in 2009 by Columbia University Press and C. Hurst & Co. and was republished in 2013 by Oxford University Press. Professor Phil Clark—my graduate school class-mate, friend, and frequent collaborator—and I co-edited that book. I have greatly valued and benefited from our regular conversations about and work together on transitional justice issues. This book undoubtedly has been shaped by those long talks, often while drinking Mutzig while looking out at banana trees atop the verdant hills of bucolic Rwanda.
The research and reflection represented in this book began before I even started graduate school in 2002 and involved many more people and experiences than I could enumerate. I will endeavor here to note some of the most important, and I apologize in advance for any omissions, which are unintentional. Given that my preparation of this book spanned more than a decade (during which I took many detours, including to attend law school and practice law), the number of individuals and institutions I am compelled to thank is quite large.
First and foremost, I thank my primary academic supervisor at Oxford, Professor Jennifer Welsh (Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford, currently on leave to serve as the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General on the Responsibility to Protect; Professor and Chair in International Relations at the European University Institute; and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford), who guided me through all phases of the research and writing of the dissertation I adapted into this book. Professor Welsh provided extensive oral and written comments on earlier drafts of that dissertation. I am greatly indebted to her for her patience, kindness, encouragement, and brilliance, and for inspiring me as a role model in my academic, professional, and personal growth.
I also wish to thank my other, temporary academic supervisor at Oxford, Professor Henry Shue. Professor Shue provided critical advice and guided my literature review on the history of the Rwandan genocide, a tragedy upon which he has reflected greatly and from which he has drawn valuable lessons about ethics in international relations.
Thank you to the examiners of my dissertation. My examiner from within Oxford was Professor Yuen Foong Khong, and my examiner from outside Oxford was Professor William Schabas. Thank you to both Professor Khong and Professor Schabas for all of the time and thought they invested into reviewing the written dissertation, conducting my oral examination of it, and providing extensive feedback.
In addition to Professors Khong, Shue, and Welsh, other Oxford faculty members have also been very supportive and helpful. In particular I thank the leaders of my section of the MPhil thesis seminar, Professor Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Professor Ulrich Krotz, who led a critical discussion of my thesis research at an early stage; Professor Khong, who taught the MPhil optional course on “The United States in International Relations since 1945,” which provided the foundation for my analysis of U.S. foreign policy; Professor Vaughan Lowe and Professor David Fidler, who taught the MPhil optional course on “The Function of Law in the International Community,” which provided the basis for my analysis of international law; Professor Martin Caedal and Professor Melvyn Leffler, who taught my section of the MPhil core course, “The Development of the International System pre-1950,” which provided background on World War II and the birth of the United Nations; Professor Alexandra Gheciu and Professor David Williams, who taught my section of the MPhil core course, “Contemporary Debates in International Relations Theory,” which provided my early exposure to international relations theories; Professor Nicolaïdis and Professor James Piscatori, who taught my section of the MPhil core course, “The Development of the International System post-1950,” which provided background on the Cold War and post–Cold War eras; Professor Rosemary Foot, who conducted my Confirmation of DPhil Status; the anonymous reviewers of my Research Design Essay; the anonymous reviewers of my MPhil thesis; Professor Sir Adam Roberts, for his assistance during the process of submit-ting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the U.S. government; and Professor Giovanni Capoccia, my (Magdalen) college supervisor from 2002 to 2004, who helped me acclimate to Oxford and encouraged my academic life there, and for whom I served as a research assistant.
I wish to thank my classmates in the MPhil in International Relations program—David Arulanantham, Dr. Ingrid Barnsley, Dr. Matthew Baugh, Dr. Alia Brahimi, Paul Brione, Dr. Julia de Clerck-Sachsse, Professor Matthew Eagleton-Pierce, David Graham, Dr. Tarun Gupta, Hideaki Konagaya, Vivek Krishnamurthy, the late John Kuhn, Sherry-Lee Singh, Stephanie Leung, Marshall Mattera, Mitsue Morita, Professor Vipin Narang, Sarah Robinson, Dr. Patrick Travers, Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, Marisa Van Saanen, Krishanti Vignarajah, and Ilya Zaslavsky—for providing such helpful feedback and warm companionship during and outside of class. Other peers from Oxford who provided the most helpful and frequent feedback and encouragement are my dear friends Fahim Ahmed, Dr. Samuel Charap, Mauro De Lorenzo, Scott Grinsell, Sarah Martin, Dr. Tanusri Prasanna, and Dr. Yong Suh.
For the research for this book, I thank the many librarians who helpfully provided assistance, including Emily Howie from the Library of Congress; Christine Ferdinand, Sally Speirs, and Hilary Pattison from Magdalen College, Oxford; Maureen Andersen and Marleen Buelinckx from the UN libraries and archives system; and Ryan Harrington, Professor S. Blair Kauffman, Evelyn Ma, Teresa Miguel-Stearns, John Nann, Barbara Olszowa, Dr. Sarah Ryan, Daniel Wade, and Cesar Zapata from Yale Law School. Others who formally assisted me with research and to whom I am grateful are Jim Hogan, FOIA Office, U.S. Department of Defense, and Margaret Roman and Richard Devine, FOIA Office, U.S. Department of State. I also wish to thank those who informally assisted me with research, including the late Dr. Alison Des Forges; Linda Melvern; Jim Silverwood, former Regional Director for Africa & the Middle East, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training, U.S. Department of Justice; Pierre St. Hilaire, former U.S. Resident Legal Advisor to Rwanda; Don DeGabrielle, former U.S. Attorney (Houston, Texas) and former U.S. Resident Legal Advisor to South Africa; Cynthia DeGabrielle, former U.S. Resident Legal Advisor to South Africa; Michael Johnson, former Chief of Prosecutions, ICTY; Mayee Warren, former Chief of Information and Evidence Section, ICTR Office of the Prosecutor, former Chef de Cabinet, ICC Office of the Prosecutor, and former Chief of Legal Operations, SCSL Office of the Prosecutor; Professor Victor Peskin, Arizona State University; Rosalyn S. Park, Staff Attorney, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights; John Washburn, Wasana Punyasena, and Simge Kocabayoglu of the American Non-Governmental Organizations Coalition for the International Criminal Court; Barbara Elias, Freedom of Information Coordinator, The National Security Archive; Dr. Mark Selden, Cornell University’s East Asia Program; Professor Alan J. Kuperman, University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs; and three of my former students from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs: Christina Beasley, Alex Treuber, and, most of all, Jana Everett.
I also wish to express my enormous gratitude to the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission for awarding me a 2002–2005 Marshall Scholarship to pursue the MPhil and DPhil in International Relations at Oxford. Furthermore, I wish to express my tremendous thanks to the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University for awarding me a 2005–2006 fellow-ship to complete a substantial portion of the writing of the dissertation. I wish to thank the following individuals for their support, friendship, and feedback during my time at Stanford and since: Professor David Backer, Professor Larry Diamond, Professor Julia Gray, Professor Terry Karl, Professor Moonhawk Kim, Professor Amichai Magen, Professor Mike McFaul, Professor Helen Stacy, Professor Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, and Professor Allen Weiner. Thank you, as well, to my many professors and mentors during my time (2006–2009) as a student at Yale Law School, in particular Professor Amy Chua, Professor Mirjan Damaška, Professor Oona Hathaway, Professor Harold Koh, Professor Yair Listokin, Professor Peter Schuck, Professor Jim Silk, and Professor Kate Stith.
While adapting my doctoral dissertation into this book, I split time between Yale and Harvard. Thank you to my colleagues in the Yale Law School Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights (especially Professor Paul Kahn, Soo-Ryun Kwon, Katherine Lawder, Barbara Mianzo, and Professor Jim Silk), the Yale University Genocide Studies Program (particularly Professor Ben Kiernan and Professor David Simon), the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law & Policy (specifically Professor David Kennedy), the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (particularly Professor Charlie Clements, Federica D’Alessandra, Professor Doug Johnson, Christopher Kintzing, Sarah Peck, Professor Sushma Raman, and Professor Kathryn Sikkink), and the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (especially Dr. Steven Miller, Susan Lynch, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Professor Stephen Walt).
While finalizing the manuscript for this book, I served as a 2014–2015 U.S. Supreme Court Fellow. I thank the following individuals for their encouragement and support during that time: Regina Andrews, Melissa Aubin, Cara Gale, LaNay George, Michel Ishakian, Lauren Jeffords, Margarita Kofalt, Jeff Minear, Laura Minor, Emmanuel “Manny” Moore, Michele Reed, Wanda Rubianes, David Sime, Shelly Snook, and my fellows Fellows: Dr. Matthew Axtell, Dr. Isra Bhatty, and Dr. Derek Webb.
I want to express my gratitude to the International Studies Committee, Gilbert Murray Trust; Magdalen College, University of Oxford; the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission; the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University; and Yale Law School for awarding me grants for expenses relating to my travel for this research, particularly to Arusha, Tanzania; Kigali, Rwanda; Washington, DC; New York City; Stanford, California; The Hague, The Netherlands; and Oxford. Thank you to my friends, Dr. Samuel Charap and Prateek Tandon, for accompanying me on a trip to Nuremberg, Germany, to visit Courtroom 600, the former site of the International Military Tribunal.
I also wish to express enormous appreciation to Dr. Judith Goldstein, Executive Director, Humanity in Action, and Professor Peter Schuck, Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus of Law, Yale Law School, for their kindness, encouragement, friendship, mentorship, and the many wonderful opportunities they have provided me since I met them in 1999.
I am honored by and grateful for the privilege to have served at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training; the ICTY; the ICTR; and the ICC, where I had the opportunity to work on some of the transitional justice issues explored in this book. I thank my supervisors and colleagues at those institutions, including Carl Alexandre, Professor Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks, Professor Laura Dickinson, Faye Ehrenstamm, Professor Harold Koh, William “Bill” Lantz, Barbara Mulvaney, Luis Moreno Ocampo, Tom Perriello, Jim Silverwood, Pierre St. Hilaire, and Mayee Warren.
Thank you to Yale University’s Department of Political Science, George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and the University of Puerto Rico Law School, where I taught courses in 2014, 2011–2012, and 2010, respectively, on transitional justice and related international issues. I thank these three institutions for providing me with the opportunity to further develop my thoughts on and to teach these subjects. And I am grateful to my students from these courses for their enthusiasm, which has motivated me to continue teaching, and for their feedback, which has undoubtedly helped shape my own thoughts.
I am also grateful to the members of the audiences who provided valuable feedback at the related talks I delivered in the course of researching this book. Over the years I was working on this book, I was honored to have delivered almost 200 such talks at the law schools, political science departments, international affairs schools, public policy schools, and/or business schools of the following universities in the United States—American, Bard, the College of William & Mary, Columbia, Dartmouth, Emory, Fordham, George Washington, Georgetown, Harvard, John Marshall, Johns Hopkins, Kean, NYU, Stanford, Tufts, the U.S. Naval Academy, Yale, and the universities of Connecticut, Maryland, Miami, Michigan, Puerto Rico, San Diego, and Southern California—and abroad—Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), Kigali Institute of Education (Rwanda), Kigali Institute of Management (Rwanda), Kigali Institute of Science & Technology (Rwanda), London School of Economics & Politics Science (United Kingdom), Melbourne (Australia), the National University of Rwanda, Nottingham (United Kingdom), and Oxford (United Kingdom). I also thank the following U.S. governmental institutions for hosting related talks: the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Africa Command, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the U.S. Judicial Conference’s International Judicial Relations Committee. In addition, I am grateful for the feedback I received during talks I delivered at the following institutions: the Aspen Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, Humanity in Action, the Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution, the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on African Affairs, and the British and Rwandan embassies in Washington, DC.
Thank you, as well, to my friends not already listed above, including Mike Buchwald, Phil Carter, Jared Cohen, Yochi Dreazen, Pierre Gemson, Josh Goldman, Dr. Brendon Graeber, Professor Christopher L. Griffin, Jr., Arvind Grover, Fawzi Jumean, Tisana “O” Kunjara Na Ayudhya, Jason Levine, Dianne Liu, Brendan and Lacey Lupetin, Ligia Markman, Jim Mitre, Jackson Muneza Mvunganyi, Professor Jennifer Nou, Joel Phillips, Ilya Podolyako, Bev Prosser, Albert “Al” Robinson, Eve Semins, Dr. Michelle Jo Semins, Vance Serchuk, Katherine Southwick, Anthony Triolo, Dr. Tamara “Tammy” Vanderwal, Lauren Vestewig, Dr. Sunil Wadhwa, Subo Wijeyeratne, and Dr. Jared Williamson. I am deeply indebted to all of my wonderful and generous friends and relatives for spending so much time with me, including many late nights, discussing transitional justice, international law, international relations, and U.S. foreign policy. These conversations and experiences influenced and inspired me immeasurably, and bits and pieces of them have inevitably found their way into this book.
I have spent a significant amount of time in Rwanda over the years, and I thank all of my friends and colleagues there, particularly my partners in building Rwanda’s first public library, the Kigali Public Library (also now known as Rwanda Library Services), including Karin Alexander, Lauren Baer, Caroline Batambuze, Beth Bensman, Page Brannon, Urmi de Baghel, Michelle Drucker, Jill Fenton, Neil Fenton, Rose Gahire, Benjamin Heineike, Amanda Hektor, Neil Helfand, Jonathan Home, Sarah Ingabire, Diana Kakoma, Sarah Kakoma, Vivek Krishnamurthy, Janet Labuda, Gwenn Laviolette, Beth Haines Levitt, Dr. Martin Levitt, Professor Abbie Liel, Binu Malajil, Paul Masterjerb, Jolly Mazimhaka, Jennifer McCard, Edson Mpyisi, Gerald Mpyisi, Ambassador Zephyr Mutanguha, Grace Nkubana, Dr. Andrew Park, Beth Payne, Michael Rakower, Raj Rajendran, Professor Geoffrey Rugege, Sheba Rugege-Hakiza, Duhirwe Rushemeza, Liliane Rushemeza, Joan Rwanyonga, Jelena Šljivić Mishina, Janepher Turatsinze, Dudu Thabede, Violette Uwamutara, Priya Vallabhbhai, Viresh Vallabhbhai, Claudia Veritas, Gitau Wamukui, and Nils Zirimwabagabo.
Acknowledging such inspiration, wonderful and critical guidance, and generous institutional and individual support, I further acknowledge that any errors and views stated in this book are mine alone, and that the latter do not necessarily represent any of the organizations with which I have been or am affiliated.