Office of War Crimes Issues

The Office of Global Criminal Justice (J/GCJ), formerly called the Office of War Crimes Issues (S/WCI), is an office within the United States Department of State.

The Office is headed by the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, currently Stephen Rapp. In that position, he advises the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Human Rights, and Democracy and works to formulate U.S. policy on prevention and accountability for mass atrocities.

The Office coordinates U.S. government support for ad hoc and international courts currently trying persons accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed (among other places) in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia, and helps bolster the capacity of domestic judicial systems to try atrocity crimes. It also works closely with other governments, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations to establish and assist international and domestic commissions, courts, and tribunals to investigate, judge, and deter atrocity crimes in every region of the globe. The Ambassador-at-Large coordinates the deployment of a range of diplomatic, legal, economic, military, and intelligence tools to help expose the truth, judge those responsible, protect and assist victims, enable reconciliation, and build the rule of law.

The current United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice is Stephen Rapp.

Famous quotes containing the words office of, office, war, crimes and/or issues:

    “Notwithstanding the unaccountable apathy with which of late years the Indians have been sometimes abandoned to their enemies, it is not to be doubted that it is the good pleasure and the understanding of all humane persons in the Republic, of the men and the matrons sitting in the thriving independent families all over the land, that they shall be duly cared for; that they shall taste justice and love from all to whom we have delegated the office of dealing with them.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The office ... make[s] its incumbent a repair man behind a dyke. No sooner is one leak plugged than it is necessary to dash over and stop another that has broken out. There is no end to it.”
    —Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    “In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.”
    —Croesus (d. c. 560 B.C.)

    “... how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
    to escape writing of the worst thing of all—
    not the crimes of other, not even our own death,
    but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
    so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
    mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?”
    —Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    “Cynicism formulates issues clearly, but only to dismiss them.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)