Elizabeth Neuffer
The Key to My Neighbor's House: Searching for Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda

Cosponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School of Government

Littauer Building, L280
79 JFK Street, Cambridge
No tickets are required.

"Neuffer, an award-winning journalist [for the Boston Globe], goes beyond the standard news reports of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia to present the victims and villains in this astonishing look at human cruelty and endurance. Following a brief review of the historical ethnic strife and more recent genocide of these two nations, Neuffer explores the search for justice via war-crime tribunals. In very personal and painful interviews, she talks to women longing for even skeletal remains that they can properly mourn, a black American judge serving on the Yugoslav tribunal who draws parallels with American racism, and a pathologist specializing in DNA who identifies the remains from unearthed mass graves. Neuffer also recalls the vanity, self-absorption, excuses, and self-justification of the torturers and rapists. Amid the human misery and cruelty, Neuffer asserts, the U.S. and other superpowers waffle and equivocate; when the time comes for justice, the UN haggles over international politics, procedure, and budgets. This is a very graphic, disturbing look at the failure of foreign policy and the difficulty of administering justice." -- Booklist