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Public International Law: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

This guide highlights key resources for international law research.

Finding Books

The following subject searches are recommended to identifying multiformat books about the ICTR. Also, there are several books written about individual trials before the court (i.e., Slobodan Milosevic) which can easily be found using their names as search terms.

  • International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
  • Trials (Crimes against humanity)--Rwanda
  • War crime trials--Rwanda
  • Genocide--Rwanda

Background

The ICTR prosecutes persons who are accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions in the territory of Rwanda from January 1, 1994 to December 31, 1994. It is also authorized to prosecute Rawandan citizens who committed these crimes in neighboring countries during the same time period. It does not have jurisdiction over organizations, political parties, army units, administrative entities or other legal subjects. It was formed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 955 on November 8, 1994.

The following titles are recommended to learn more about the ICTR:

The Court

The ICTR is organized into three Trial Chambers and one Appeals Chamber. The Trial Chamber consists of three permanent judges and a maximum of four ad litem judges. The Appeals Chamber consists of seven permanent judges. The working languages of the ICTR are English and French.

Since the ICTR closed operations in 2015, The United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals is responsible for maintaining the legacy website for the ICTR.  The legacy website still has all of its documentation (best practice manuals, rules of procedure, rules of evidence, cases, etc.).

Cases:  There is no official print reporter for the ICTR cases.

ICTR Cases provides the indictments, judgments, transcripts, as well as key decisions and orders from each case. You can browse the documents from the Advanced Browse tab, or use the Full Search tab to search the documents by keywords. In the Full Search option, you can select the case law databases from the provided list to limit your results to cases.

The Mechanism provides a more detailed access point to the cases for the ICTR on their website.

Appeals Chamber Case Law Research Tool (2006 onwards) covers judgements and key decisions from the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).