To start off the Human Rights for the 21st Century speaker series, David Scheffer will speak at the McNamara Alumni Center on February 8. Scheffer had an insider's seat at the creation of the most important human rights institution of our era, the International Criminal Court.
David Scheffer
All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals
February 8, 2012, 7:00 PM
McNamara Alumni Center
Maroon & Gold Room
200 Oak Street SE, Minneapolis (East Bank)
David Scheffer had an insider's seat at the creation of the most important human rights institution of our era, the International Criminal Court. Representing President Clinton as head of the U.S. delegation to the negotiations establishing the Court, Scheffer drew on his previous experience in spearheading efforts to create war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia.
Scheffer has built a career working to stop war crimes and other atrocities. He has been to the killing fields of Sierra Leone and to the political back rooms of the U.N. Security Council, where he engaged with major figures such as Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Wesley Clark, among others. Scheffer has written extensively on the topic of seeking justice for war crimes and will spend the evening giving a personal account of his experiences as covered in his latest book, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals. Listen with us as Scheffer shares the personal and political drama that unfolded during the international efforts to establish the Court and to make "never again" truly mean "never again".
David Scheffer is currently the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law, and was recently selected by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to be a Special Expert to advise the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials on the current crisis before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. In fall of this year, Scheffer will join the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Scheffer's talk is the first in a series and is free and open to the public. A small reception will follow. Look for more information for the other series events:
February 28 - The International Human Rights Movement: A History, Aryeh Neier, President of Open Society Foundations, founder and former director of Human Rights Watch
April 3 - Moving Children: Child Migration in the 21st Century, Jacqueline Bhabha, executive director, Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies.
