Transitional Justice and Accountability

Day three of the summer school includes interviews with experts on transitional justice best practices, the peace vs justice debate, and local transitional justice efforts in Syria, as well as an expert roundtable on options for accountability for the atrocity crimes committed in Syria. This page includes the schedule for the day, details on the experts who presented, additional resources and a recording of the July 9 zoom session.

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Schedule:

  • Introduction

  • Transitional Justice - Lessons Learned from Sierra Leone (Ambassador Yvette Stevens)

  • Accountability (justice vs peace) (Prof. Meg deGuzman)

  • Break

  • Domestic and locally owned transitional justice and state-building processes in Syria (Joud Monla-Hassan) 

  • Roundtable: Accountability for International Crimes Committed in Syria (Ambassador Stephen Rapp, Kate Gibson, and Prof. Michael Scharf)

  • Closing

Additional Resources

Experts:

  • Judge Professor Margaret deGuzman is a Senior Peace Fellow with PILPG, James E. Beasley Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, and Co-Director of Temple’s Institute for International Law and Public Policy. Her scholarship focuses on the role of international criminal law in the global legal order, with a particular emphasis on the work of the International Criminal Court. In 2022, Judge Professor deGuzman was appointed by the United Nations Secretary General to the roster of Judges of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. She has worked as an international expert in a group studying the proposed addition of criminal jurisdiction to the mandate of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and is currently working on a project researching the impact of the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Courts of Senegal on national, regional, and global justice norms. Prior to joining Temple’s faculty, Judge Professor deGuzman clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law in San Francisco for six years, specializing in criminal defense. Judge Professor deGuzman also served as a legal advisor to the Senegal delegation at the Rome Conference where the International Criminal Court was created and as a law clerk in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Darou N’diar, Senegal.

  • Kate Gibson is Senior Legal Advisor at the Public International Law & Policy Group and currently the co-counsel of Mr. Bosco Ntaganda before the International Criminal Court. She was the Co-Counsel of the former President of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadzic, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the Co-Counsel of Liberian President Charles Taylor before the Special Court for Sierra Leone.  Kate was the youngest person to be appointed as Lead Counsel in a genocide case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She spent 10 years representing  the former Vice President of the Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, before the International Criminal Court, and also represented victims in the first case before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. She currently is part of the legal team of former Kosovan President Hashim Thaci before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague. 

  • Dean Michael P. Scharf is the Co-Founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG). He is also the Co-Dean of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the Joseph C. Hostetler—BakerHostetler Professor of Law.

    Scharf has led USAID-funded transitional justice projects in Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, and Turkey (for Syria), and maritime piracy projects in Kenya, Mauritius, and The Seychelles. During a sabbatical in 2008, Scharf served as Special Assistant to the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal and during the elder Bush and Clinton Administrations, he served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney- Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs, and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

    A graduate of Duke University School of Law (Order of the Coif and High Honors), and judicial clerk to Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat on the Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, Scharf is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and 20 books, four of which have won national book of the year honors. A past recipient of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law Alumni Association's "Distinguished Teacher Award" and Ohio Magazine's "Excellence in Education Award," Scharf continues to teach International Law and was ranked as among the most cited authors in the field since 2010 by the 2016 and 2019 Sisk/Leiter studies. Since 2013, Scharf has been the producer and host of "Talking Foreign Policy," a radio program broadcast on WCPN 90.3 FM and other NPR affiliates across the country. Scharf was recently elected President-elect of the American Branch of the International Law Association.

  • Dr. Gregory P. Noone is the Executive Director of the Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG). Dr. Noone currently leads the Yemen track two diplomacy team and served as the Senior Legal Advisor for the Human Rights Documentation Solutions project. Dr. Noone has conducted PILPG justice system assessments in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire as well as provided transitional justice assistance in post-Gaddafi Libya and to the Syrian opposition. Dr. Noone was also part of the international effort investigating the Myanmar government’s atrocities committed against their Rohingya population. He worked as an investigator in the refugee camps in Bangladesh and as one of the legal experts on the report’s findings.  Previously, Dr. Noone worked as a Senior Program Officer for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), served as a Captain in the United States Navy, as the Commanding Officer of the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) reserve unit, and as the Commanding Officer of the Navy JAG International and Operational Law reserve unit as well as the Director of the Department of Defense’s Periodic Review Secretariat (PRS). 

  • Ambassador Yvette Stevens has a vast experience, working for 28 years in six United Nations entities, covering humanitarian assistance globally, as well as development and peace and security in Africa.

    Following her retirement from the United Nations, as the United Nations Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator, she returned home to Sierra Leone and served as Policy Adviser to her government for three years, before being appointed as Ambassador and Permanent Représentative to the United Nations and other organizations in Geneva. In this capacity she represented her country at the Human Rights Council, first as observer and later as observer. At the HRC, she was very active, inter Alia, in the human rights of women, people living with albinism and prevention.

    After her retirement as Ambassador, she was appointed by the President of the HRC, to serve as Chair/Rapporteur of a group of three to spearhead widespread consultations among stakeholders on how the HRC can enhance its role in the prevention of human rights violations. She presented her report to the Council in March of 2020.

  • Joud Monla-Hassan is the Director of Citizens for a Secure and Safe America (C4SSA), a Syrian American nonprofit advancing justice, accountability, and a democratic transition in Syria. A Syrian American of Circassian heritage with family roots in Aleppo, she has spent over a decade working at the intersection of grassroots advocacy, survivor-centered justice, and high-level policy engagement. Joud previously served as a Program Officer at the National Democratic Institute and as a Research Analyst at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), where she was a founding member of the Syria Study Group.

    Her fieldwork has taken her across refugee communities in the region, where she has documented survivor testimonies and researched issues including child marriage in displacement settings, with several published articles informing global advocacy. She has spoken widely—including at The Citadel University and international conferences—on the future of post-Assad Syria, stabilization, and the role of global actors. Through her work with U.S. institutions, the United Nations, and civil society networks, Joud continues to advocate for a survivor-informed and Syrian-led international response that is inclusive, credible, and grounded in local realities.

  • Ambassador Stephen Rapp is a Senior Peace Fellow at PILPG. He is a Senior Visiting Fellow of Practice with the Blavatnik School’s Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict’s Programme on International Peace and Security. He also currently serves as Distinguished Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide, and as Chair of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, which has collected and analysed more than 750,000 pages of documentation from Syria and Iraq to prepare cases for future prosecution.

    From 2009 to 2015, he was Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the US State Department. During his tenure, he travelled more than 1.5 million miles to 87 countries to engage with victims, civil society organisations, investigators and prosecutors, and the leaders of governments and international bodies to further efforts to bring the perpetrators of mass atrocities to justice.  

    Ambassador Rapp was the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2009, where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. From 2001 to 2007, he served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history of leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide.