Former U.S. Ambassador for War Crimes Issues David Scheffer spoke at the University’s Law School Friday about his experiences during his four-year term as U.S. Ambassador, some of which are described in his book “All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals.” 

As part of Scheffer’s “quest for credible justice,” he assisted in establishing the first war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. He did so while working for Madeleine Albright, who was ambassador to the United Nations during President Clinton’s first term and secretary of state during his second. Scheffer’s efforts eventually helped lead to the creation of the permanent International Criminal Court.

Before the creation of the ICC in 2002, the United Nations created individual criminal tribunals to prosecute each instance of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity after 60 countries ratified the Rome Statute of the Criminal Court. 

“My book is about discovering the right formula in ever-changing international circumstances to confront monstrous evil, and to confront it in the courtroom,” Scheffer said.

Before 1993, international criminal courts did not exist, which created an international culture essentially legalizing leadership impunity, Scheffer said. The ICC, however, is allowed to prosecute crimes committed after its creation. 

Scheffer’s career suffered setbacks as he attempted to facilitate the transition from the “old world” of pre-1993 to the post-1993 “new world” by establishing international tribunals. Scheffer humbly told the “story of what was not built,” that is the failed attempts he and others made to secure justice for various peoples. During Scheffer’s tenure he pushed for tribunals in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Iraq and Chechnya, but he was ultimately unsuccessful.

“[Scheffer] had a mission to attain justice for past atrocities, and I think the hurdles he had to go through in order to establish the proper mechanisms to actually attain justice and the many times that he failed because of the bureaucratic system are interesting,” first-year Law student Sharif Gray said.

“All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals” covers the eight-year period of the Clinton administration, during which Scheffer worked for Albright.

“During that eight year period I had an extraordinary opportunity, thanks to Madeleine Albright, to immerse myself in a truly transformational moment in history, particularly for international justice,” Scheffer said.

Scheffer initially submitted 250,000 words to Princeton University Press, but he had to delete 190,000 of the words to comply with length constraints. Scheffer also discussed the deletions from his book. 

Scheffer’s talk was the second discussion hosted by the University in the past two weeks which discussed war crimes tribunals.