We take a trip back in our time machine to 1998, a few years after the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up, and look at what was going on, and the main issues that this new body was dealing with.

Our guide is none other than our own Janet Anderson whose first experience of international criminal justice this was. She carried a microphone around with her even in those days, and made a small audio documentary for Radio Netherlands.

The backdrop was of course the genocide in Rwanda where more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

Janet managed to talk to a few well-known names: Navanathem Pillay, then judge at the court, later its president, later still a judge at the International Criminal Court, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and now head of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry into Palestine; and James Stewart, a Canadian member of the prosecution and later deputy prosecutor at the ICC.

Along the way, Janet and Steph discuss issues that continue to reverberate including witness protection, where convicts serve their sentences and where those found not guilty have found themselves (check out our podcast on that).

In the end we get a small insight into what Rwandan genocide survivors now make of the ICTR’s work. from genocide scholar Dr Philibert Gakwenzire.