The Biden-Harris Approach to International Justice

About the Speaker: Dr. Beth Van Schaack was sworn in as the Department’s sixth Ambassador-at-Large for GlobalCriminal Justice (GCJ) on March 17, 2022. In this role, she advises the Secretary of State and otherDepartment 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 to2013. 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 forPreventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & ConflictResolution Clinic. Ambassador Van Schaack began her academic career at Santa Clara UniversitySchool 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 theInternational 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 UniversityPress). From 2014 to 2022, she served as Executive Editor for Just Security, an online forum fort he analysis of national security, foreign policy, and rights. She is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale(JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.