The Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs will host a conversation with Stephen J. Rapp,  former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes. The discussion will be moderated by Jonathan Fanton, president emeritus of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the Jackson School Board of Advisors.

As the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, Rapp led the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department from 2009-2015. In this role, he coordinated U.S. government support to international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, as well as to hybrid and national courts responsible for prosecuting persons charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

Rapp also served as the prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2007-2009, where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor resulting in landmark convictions for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, and for attacks on peacekeepers and recruitment and use of child soldiers as violations of international humanitarian law. From 2001-2007, he served as senior trial attorney and chief of prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history of leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide.

Rapp 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 Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict.