A Look Back at the Trial That Made Rape a War Crime
The task was almost unimaginable in its magnitude.
After the Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered over a hundred days in 1994, the U.N. created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with the goal of bringing the organizers of the bloodshed to justice.
The tribunal’s inaugural case, led by two young U.S. prosecutors, would set a number of precedents — but perhaps none more significant than classifying rape as a war crime.
Journalists Michele Mitchell and Nick Louvel have directed a new documentary, “The Uncondemned,” that takes a powerful look back at the tribunal and the unique challenges faced by Pierre-Richard Prosper and Sara Darehshori, the lawyers who prosecuted the first genocide trial. They won their case in 1998 and made history as sexual violence was judged part of genocide for the first time.