As the illegal invasion of Ukraine grinds on into its seventh month, atrocity crimes have been reportedly committed by the Russian forces. Ukrainian officials suspect that the number of war crimes rises to more than 15,000.
On May 25, 2022, three months and one day after the invasion, the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom established the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA) as the agreed trans-Atlantic community mechanism for addressing atrocity crimes in Ukraine.
The ACA is led by Georgetown University’s Ambassador Clint Williamson (formerly a Senior Director, Fellow, and Professor at the McCain Institute and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law).
This panel featured Amb. Van Schaack, Amb. Williamson, lawyers, reporters, prosecutors, and investigators who are making sure that the Ukrainians and the International Community hold Russian individuals accountable for the atrocity crimes they have committed.
Read the press release here.
Opening Remarks:
Amb. Beth Van Schaack
Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice
First Panel:
Amb. Clint Williamson
Lead Advisor, EU-UK-US Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group
Moderator:
Dr. Evelyn Farkas
Executive Director, McCain Institute for International Leadership
Second Panel:
Roman Avramenko
Executive Director, Truth Hounds
Nataliya Zubar
Chair, Maidan Monitoring Information Center
Scott Martin
Founder, Global Justice Advisors
Andrea Cayley
Coordinator, EU-UK-US Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group
Moderator:
Pedro Pizano
Human Rights and Democracy Program Manager, McCain Institute for International Leadership
Biographies:
Beth Van Schaack, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice
Dr. Beth Van Schaack was sworn in as the Department’s sixth Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (GCJ) on March 17, 2022. In this role, she advises the Secretary of State and other Department leadership on issues related to the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Ambassador Van Schaack served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large in GCJ from 2012 to 2013. Prior to returning to public service in 2022, Ambassador Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Ambassador Van Schaack began her academic career at Santa Clara University School of Law, where, in addition to teaching and writing on international human rights issues, she served as the Academic Adviser to the United States interagency delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Ambassador Van Schaack has published numerous articles and papers on international human rights and justice issues, including her 2020 thesis, Imagining Justice for Syria (Oxford University Press). From 2014 to 2022, she served as Executive Editor for Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of national security, foreign policy, and rights. She is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.
Amb. Clint Williamson, Lead Advisor of the EU-UK-US Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group
Ambassador Clint Williamson (Ret), currently serves as the Lead Advisor, heading the joint EU-UK-US Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA) for Ukraine. He is the Senior Coordinator for International Justice at Georgetown University, affiliated with the Center on National Security at Georgetown Law. Previously, he served as European Union Special Prosecutor (2011-2014), as a United Nations Special Envoy (2010-2011), as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (2006-2009), and at the White House on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Relief, Stabilization and Development and as Director for Stability Operations (2003-2006). Prior to his White House posting, he served as Senior Adviser to the Ministry of Justice in Iraq (2003) and as Director of Justice in the UN Mission in Kosovo (2001-2002). He also served at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia as a Trial Attorney (1994-2001) and before that as a federal prosecutor for the U.S Department of Justice and a state prosecutor in New Orleans. He is a graduate of the Tulane University School of Law and Louisiana Tech University.
Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas, Executive Director, McCain Institute
Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas has three decades of experience working on national security and foreign policy in the U.S. executive, legislative branch, private sector and for international organizations overseas. In 2019-2020 she ran to represent New York’s 17th Congressional District in the House of Representatives. She is currently the executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University. Prior to that, she was president of Farkas Global Strategies and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United State and the Atlantic Council and national security contributor for NBC/MSNBC.
She served from 2012 to 2015 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, Balkans, Caucasus and conventional arms control. From 2010 to 2012, she was the senior advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and special advisor to the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit. Prior to that, she was the executive director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism and senior fellow at the American Security Project. From 2001 to 2008, she served as a professional staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee responsible for Asia Pacific, Western Hemisphere, Special Operations Command, and policy issues including combatting terrorism and export control.
From 1997-2001, Dr. Farkas was a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College. She served 1996-97 in Bosnia with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). She has published numerous journal articles and opinion pieces and “Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s “(Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press). She speaks Hungarian and German and has studied French, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Russian and Hindi.
Dr. Farkas obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She serves as a D.C. family court-appointed special advocate. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Directors for the Project 2049 Institute, Supporters of Civil Society in Russia, Leadership Council-Women in National Security, and the Board of Trustees of her alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College.
Roman Avramenko, Truth Hounds Executive Director
Roman Avramenko is executive director of NGO Truth Hounds, has been documenting war crimes, crimes against humanity and other grave human rights violations since 2014. Seeking justice for the victims of grave human rights violations he has completed more than 50 field missions to Eastern Ukraine, Crimea, Armenia and Palestine. Roman also investigates the perpetrators of international crimes by means of collecting and analyzing evidence for the purposes of ICC and other domestic and international justice mechanisms.
Nataliya Zubar, Maidan Monitoring Information Center, Chair
Nataliya Zubar is chair of Maidan Monitoring Information Center, a pro-direct democracy nongovernmental organization that strives to protect societal security in Ukraine. The Center’s work prioritizes reducing the level of violence in society, improving the culture of communication, and public dialogue. In her work, Nataliya focuses on monitoring and promoting civil freedoms in Ukraine. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, Nataliya has become known for her work in collecting visual evidence of possible war crimes committed by Russia.
Throughout her career, Nataliya has worked in journalism, civic activism, information security, peacebuilding, adult education, and, most recently, war reporting arenas.
Nataliya is from Kharkiv, Ukraine and studied Physics Engineering at the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute.”
Scott Martin, Global Justice Advisors Founder
Active in Ukraine since 2015 and recognized by the Ukrainian Government through his cabinet-level appointment to the International Humanitarian Law Commission for the Government of Ukraine, Mr. Martin has long been a leading voice in Ukraine on a range of matters relating to international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international human rights law, and environmental law.
Scott has provided many years of assistance to the State Security Services of Ukraine, the Prosecutor General’s Office, Armed Forces of Ukraine, the military police of Ukraine, and others to prevent, identify, investigate, and prosecute international crimes. He has also conducted many independent investigations into human rights violations and presented such information to various institutions, including the International Criminal Court, OSCE, Council of Europe, UN bodies, and other regional and international remedial mechanisms. He has spoken at countless events about Ukraine, both in-country and at the International Criminal Court. Concerning legal reform, he has worked as the principal international contributor to amend the Criminal Code of Ukraine in an effort to conform it to international standards. He has also worked to revise the Ukrainian IHL military manual and field manual concerning international humanitarian law.
Andrea Cayley, Coordinator, EU-UK-US Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group
Andrea Matačić Cayley is the coordinator of the EU-UK-US Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group and director of The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s Washington D.C. Programs. The Washington D.C. Programs include: Antitrust Law, International Rule of Law and Security, and the Indian Law Program.
Andrea worked for two decades as a lawyer with the United Nations. She began her career as a UN liaison officer to the US Congress, then spent 15 years in the Hague working in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and 4 years in Cambodia working on prosecutions of the Khmer Rouge.
Andrea was the Director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Director of International Projects. She worked on domestic prosecutions of war crimes as a Senior Legal Fellow for the Center of Justice and Accountability and as the US Country Coordinator of Civitas Maxima.
Andrea is the Co-Founder and Executive Vice-President of EOS Tech Trust, where she serves as the Director of Human Rights and Rule of Law projects.
She has taught International Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova Law School. As part of a US-Russia foundation grant awarded to the McCain Institute and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Andrea has trained Russian civil society on legal venues to prosecute human rights violations. Andrea is part of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory group for Ukraine. She has published numerous articles concerning the prosecution of war crimes and human rights violations.
Andrea is one of the founders of the Indradevi Hope Award, established to honor individuals working to strengthen women’s rights in Cambodia. She worked with Jesuit Refugee Services to provide pro bono legal advice on land rights to Cambodians and was a member of the board of Family Promise, a non-profit working to help families out of homelessness in the Philadelphia area.
Andrea has a BA from Columbia University, an MA from the University of Zagreb, a JD from Temple University, and a PhD from Leiden University.
Pedro Pizano, Human Rights and Democracy Program Manager, McCain Institute for International Leadership
Pedro Pizano is a Program Manager for the Democracy & Human Rights Programs at the McCain Institute for International Leadership in Washington D.C. He previously served as the Northwestern-McCain Public Interest Legal Award Fellow and the International Criminal Law Fellow and Human Rights Journalism Fellow at the McCain Institute and ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s International Rule of Law and Security (IRLS) Program, under Amb. Clint Williamson.
In 2018, Pizano graduated cum laude and with honors with a dual J.D./LL.M. in international human rights law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, Ill. He was the executive editor of the Journal of Human Rights and the co-founder of a debate club: The Speakers Union. He was jointly appointed by the presidents of both the Northwestern Federalist Society and the Northwestern American Constitution Society, as the co-chair of the Civic Education Committee, as Northwestern Law was one of the law schools, if not the first, to cancel classes on election day so students, faculty, and staff could volunteer as poll watchers and officials, and reinforce our shared common civic liberal democratic responsibilities.
Before law school, Pizano earned a joint certificate in international human rights law from Oxford University and George Washington University’s law school. Prior to that, he worked for three years as the global media liaison and strategy and development associate at the Human Rights Foundation and Oslo Freedom Forum in New York City. In 2013, he was recognized as one of the 99 under 33 most promising young professionals in foreign policy by the Diplomatic Courier. His opinions and byline have appeared in, among others, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Slate, Forbes, El Tiempo, El Mundo and the BBC. He was born in Bogotá, Colombia and is also a native Spanish speaker, fluent in French, and knows basic Arabic.
