Stephen Rapp, a victim of a violent crime as a young man, became a prosecutor, first for the U.S. Attorney's Office, and from 2001 to 2006 at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Rapp led a landmark case against three Rwandan journalists charged with and found guilty of genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and other crimes. Rapp left the ICTR in 2006 to become the prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The ICTR and a sister tribunal for Yugoslavia built upon precedents set at the end of World War II, when 21 Nazi leaders were tried for their crimes at Nuremberg. After decades of this body of law going untested, the 1990s witnessed a marked change in the willingness of individual countries and the United Nations to use international criminal proceedings in response to atrocities. In 1998, a permanent International Criminal Court was created by treaty.

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