<span class="vcard">Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp</span>

Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp

Guest Author

Stephen Rapp is a former United States Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice during 2009-2015, where he coordinated U.S. Government support for international, hybrid, and national courts and tribunals prosecuting atrocity crimes. From 2007-2009, Ambassador Rapp served as prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. From 2001-2007, he served as senior trial attorney and chief of prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the team that achieved the convictions of media leaders for incitement to genocide. He was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa in 1993-2001.

He is currently a Senior Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide, and at Oxford University’s Center for Law, Ethics and Armed Conflict. He serves as Chair of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a Senior Peace Fellow of the Public International Law and Policy Group, and on the boards of Physicians for Human Rights, the IBA Human Rights Institute, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative, and the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights

Articles by this author:

Line of people in suits in front of podium with US flag in background and screen announcing USA v. Lafarge case.
Diane Foley, the mother of slain ISIS hostage James Foley, stands alongside the parents of slain ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller, Carl Mueller and Marsha Mueller, and family members of 2 other slain ISIS hostages, following the guilty pleas by Alexanda Kotey, a member of the notorious Islamic State kidnapping cell dubbed the "Beatles," to charges of conspiring to murder four American hostages, including Mueller and Foley, outside the the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, September 2, 2021.
Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa addresses the nation as Airforce Chief Sumangala Dias, Army Chief Shavendra Silva, Navy Chief Piyal De Silva look on during the Sri Lanka's 72nd Independence Day celebrations in Colombo on February 4, 2020.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at a press conference at the State Department in Washington DC, on March 17, 2020.

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