From Northern Ireland to Africa: A Mitchell Scholar Makes a Difference

by Amanda Wetzel

During my year as a Mitchell Scholar, I observed transitional justice in Northern Ireland producing tangible results for people on the ground. When I returned to the United States, I felt some closure to my work because I left Belfast with a detailed knowledge of the individuals and organizations that continue to work toward reconciliation. As my thoughts take me back to Northern Ireland, I sit today in Arusha, Tanzania. I am an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). I have found that working at a remote international tribunal feels very different than reconciliation and even legal work carried out directly in the country concerned. In Bosnia and Northern Ireland, my work with local or quasi-international organizations seemed more immediately connected with the larger peace effort. In time, I may become better informed about how the work of the ICTR relates to what is happening on the ground in Rwanda. For the moment, my ICTR internship is proving to be a meaningful opportunity to help ensure justice is fairly applied to perpetrators of genocide through using the legal research and writing skills that I developed at Columbia Law School.

I work for a team of legal officers that assists a judge to make factual and legal findings in two high-profile cases. During my first three weeks at the ICTR, the judges have been on judicial recess and, consequently, the trial proceedings are paused. Despite the absence of most judges, judicial recess is still a busy time for most legal officers and interns. During my first few weeks of work, I have been drafting preliminary versions of Trial Chamber decisions on several motions and working on summaries of past witness statements. My work helps insure that the Trial Chamber judges will have draft decisions available and/or enough information to evaluate witness testimony upon their return. In the next week, I look forward to meeting my Trial Chamber’s judges and to observing witness testimony in one of my cases.

As I do my job, I have the sense that I am helping the international community fulfill a dual commitment to Rwanda. The first element of the ICTR’s commitment is to uncover the truth about the role of high level perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. The second and equally important element is to ensure that the accused have the fair trials that they may not receive in post-conflict Rwanda. Therefore, I necessarily focus on the details of each assignment to ensure that my work will contribute to the Trial Chamber’s factually and legally accurate decisions.

This is not the kind of work you leave behind when you go home at night. When I go home my mind is haunted by testimony I’ve read. I turn over and over in my mind questions about the tribunal and how it fits into Rwandan transitional society, and the broader role of the ICTR in reconciliation. I wonder how well the average Rwandan, who may be a reintegrating perpetrator or a victim coming to terms with an offending neighbor, understands and relates to the ICTR’s work. In order to begin to answer some of my queries, I look forward to visiting Rwanda. By observing local reconciliation efforts and talking to people on the ground, I hope to gain a broader understanding of how Rwanda interacts with the ICTR. The law student in me thrives on my legal assignments at the ICTR, yet the human rights researcher that I have also become wants to investigate how the ICTR fits with local transitional justice and reconciliation efforts.

Although I acutely feel the distance between Arusha and Kigali, I am enjoying the hospitality of the Tanzanian people and the company of my fellow interns. Despite the challenges of their extreme poverty, Tanzanians welcome ICTR staff and interns into the community. Every shopkeeper and each person I meet on the street wants to know where I am from and if I have I been to Africa before. When I reply that this is my first time living in Africa, they tell me that I am very welcome. Their warm Tanzanian welcome has helped me to feel more at home as I live and work in the shadow of Mount Meru.

Amanda Wetzel graduated from Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College in 2002. She was a George J. Mitchell scholar at the Queen’s University of Belfast School of Law and graduated in December 2003 with Distinction and a LL.M. in Human Rights Law. She is currently a joint JD/Master en Droit student at Columbia Law School and Université Paris I-Panthèon la Sorbonne. In October 2006, she will begin the French portion of her studies. During her time at Columbia Law School, Amanda was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, an editor on the Human Rights Law Review, a member of the 2005-2006 Vis International Arbitration Moot Team, and Chair of the Domestic Violence Project. Amanda has previously worked at the U.S. Department of State in both Washington D.C. and Belfast, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and the Defence Section of the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia. In the summer 2006, she was a Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett Public Interest Fellow and worked both as a summer associate in the firm’s New York office and as an intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Amanda expects to graduate from Columbia Law School and La Sorbonne in 2008 and will qualify to practice law in New York and France. This is the first of two entries written by Amanda describing her experience at the ICTR.