US-Ireland Alliance

Coordinator of Justice Rapid Response Meets with Mitchell Scholars

20 July 2011.  Nearly 20 Mitchell Scholars and friends of the program gathered in New York yesterday to meet Andras Vamos-Goldman, the Coordinator of Justice Rapid Response (JRR).

Andras told the group to think of the multilateral group as a sort of temp agency that responds to requests by the international community by taking part in international investigations in situations where human rights and international criminal law violations may have occurred.  Some examples of where the JRR has deployed:  Guinea, Haiti, the DRC, Kyrgzstan and Cote d’Ivoire.

JRR allows the international community to provide much needed support for compliance with and the effective enforcement of international criminal justice, thus helping to make justice an integral and constructive part of conflict resolution and post-conflict peace-building.  At the request of a State or international institution with jurisdiction, JRR experts can deploy quickly to identify, collect and preserve the most perishable information about crimes under international law and massive human rights violations, and report back to the requesting authority.  

Andras is a serving Canadian Foreign Service Officer with 26 years of experience in mainly multilateral diplomacy and international justice. He helped to conceptualize and develop Justice Rapid Response (JRR) and is currently its Coordinator. His diplomatic assignments have included East Africa; Washington DC and the United Nations in New York, where he served as both Head of the Political Section and Legal Adviser. His most recent assignment was as Deputy High Commissioner of Canada to South Africa. He has also worked in the private sector as a private international law attorney; as a consultant with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court; and at the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Initiative.