Rupert Elderkin *14 Keeps Fighting for the Victims of Rwanda’s Genocide

Although the Rwandan genocide lasted 100 days during the spring and summer of 1994, its horrors have lingered for generations. Every day, from a small office in Arusha, Tanzania, Rupert Elderkin *14 still attempts to bring the remaining offenders to justice.

Elderkin is a senior trial attorney for the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. The unit was formed in 2010 to merge the tribunals investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. Elderkin, who previously prosecuted war crimes committed in Serbia and Kosovo, has worked in Arusha since 2021.

Sources vary widely in their numbers, but it is estimated that between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans were killed during the three-and-a-half-month civil war, mostly members of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes, making it one of the worst genocides in history. “This was not mechanized killing,” Elderkin says. “Everyone was killed by someone, and that’s a lot of someones to prosecute.”

But with many of the most notorious figures in both the Yugoslavian and Rwandan genocides already prosecuted, and stable national governments now established to pursue most of the remaining cases, the U.N. decided to wind down its own tribunals. It has since turned its attention to supporting ongoing local investigations and prosecutions. However, Elderkin’s unit may, and still does, manage some larger cases on its own.

One of those cases was the first one Elderkin handled after arriving in Tanzania. He served as co-lead counsel in the prosecution of Félicien Kabuga, who was believed to be the richest man in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. Accused of funding groups that killed thousands of people, and of importing many of the machetes used in those killings, Kabuga was arrested in 2020 after 26 years on the run. He was charged with six counts of genocide, incitement to genocide, and crimes against humanity. However, the U.N. judged that Kabuga was no longer mentally competent to stand trial, and he remains in custody in the Netherlands.

Perhaps the most prominent case Elderkin is currently working on is the prosecution of Fulgence Kayishema, who allegedly ordered the massacre of hundreds of Tutsis seeking sanctuary inside a church in the region of Nyange. Although he was indicted in absentia decades ago by a Rwandan tribunal, Kayishema remained at large until he was arrested in South Africa in 2023. Facing 54 charges of genocide, he remains in South Africa until he can be extradited. Elderkin is working to gather documentary evidence that he hopes will someday support a Rwandan prosecution.

“Even if you’re not going after the biggest fish, what you’re doing at this stage is trying to show that there is a system, there is justice, and you can’t evade it simply by going on the run.”

— Rupert Elderkin *14, Senior trial attorney, United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals

The job may at times be tedious, but it is still critical. Elderkin characterizes his current work as a mix of investigation, advising, and a small amount of trial preparation. He spends most of his days in front of a screen, sorting through reams of digitized paperwork, including prison records, government archives, and private communications, where they exist.

“You’re not doing the classic detective work as in a TV courtroom show,” Elderkin explains. “You’re looking at material that is decades old. Maybe someone hasn’t spoken or they’re dead now. There are a lot more historical steps to the process compared to just being on trial.”

Born in the United Kingdom, Elderkin studied politics, philosophy, and economics in college but was unsure of his career plans. “It was one of these classic, go to Oxford and then do something without knowing what you wanted to do,” he says now. Elderkin eventually decided to get a law degree, in part to overcome a fear of public speaking. He began his legal career as an associate in the Brussels office of the law firm Cleary Gottlieb doing banking and insurance work, but it was clear he had an eye on something more engaging.

While still a law firm associate, Elderkin took two leaves of absence. During the first, in 2003, he and a team unsuccessfully attempted to climb Mt. Everest. Two years later, Elderkin and another group of British amateurs participated in a BBC reality series seeking to recreate Roald Amundsen’s 1911 race to the South Pole, using replica equipment and supplies, such as a sextant for navigation and pemmican for food.

“I disappeared for a few months [to Antarctica] to wear reindeer fur and get pulled around on the ice,” Elderkin laughs. “It was a wonderful experience, but I clearly wasn’t marking my card in the way you’d expect if you wanted to stay in a law firm.”

Fortunately, a very different challenge presented itself. A friend working in The Hague, on the U.N. tribunal investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, told Elderkin about a job opening there. Elderkin spent the next seven years, from 2006 to 2013, at The Hague investigating and prosecuting Bosnian war crimes, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslims were killed.

After spending a semester at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, Elderkin earned a master’s degree in public policy at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. In 2015, he spent a year as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Elderkin then returned to The Hague to join a European Union task force investigating crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Although the Rwandan genocide has long since disappeared from the front pages, the work of bringing the offenders to justice will continue for decades, much as former Nazis continued to be prosecuted long after the end of World War II. “There are many, many more still who, if we can find them, or if the Rwandans or any third country could find them, would justifiably go on trial,” Elderkin says. How many will face justice remains to be seen, but the process, he believes, serves its own purpose.

“Even if you’re not going after the biggest fish, what you’re doing at this stage is trying to show that there is a system, there is justice, and you can’t evade it simply by going on the run,” Elderkin says. “The messaging and the act of doing justice are as important as the retribution toward whichever individual you’re going after.”