DERMOT GROOME JOINS THE BOARD OF THE INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS
January 2025 — Professor Dermot Groome has been unanimously nominated to the oversight board of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations.
The Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) is an independent, not-for-profit, non-governmental organization providing human rights professionals with the training and knowledge necessary to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and the most serious human rights violations.
IICI contributes to the development, clarification and strengthening of international investigations standards and best practices through its capacity-building and experts’ advisory work, including written guidelines to human rights organizations.
IICI is leading the Murad Code Project, which has the Global Code of Conduct for Gathering and Using Information about Systematic and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.
IICI has also supported the development and implementation of the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict (1st and 2nd editions), including through training and mentoring projects and by developing supplemental materials to particularize investigative practices to conflict areas like Ukraine and Myanmar. It provides an online library of standards, protocol and other resources that are available to human rights organizations around the world.
Professor Dermot Groome is a Professor of Law and the Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law. Much of his teaching, scholarship, and service focus on emerging areas of human rights and international criminal law and draw upon his deep expertise and experiences. After starting his career in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office where he was a member of the Sex Crimes Unit and after working in Jamaica, W.I. on issues of community development, human rights, and children’s rights, Professor Groome worked in Cambodia. While in Cambodia, he served as a Legal Advisor to the International Human Rights Law Group, helped lead an investigation into a 1997 attack on peaceful protestors and drafted a report for the UN Security Council, helped the Cambodia Defender’s Project and Legal Aid of Cambodia investigate deaths in police custody, worked on issues related to the incarceration of children, and wrote a draft juvenile criminal procedure code. Professor Groome subsequently spent over 11 years as a senior war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He investigated and drafted the first genocide indictment against a sitting head of state, Slobodan Milošević, and was the Senior Trial Attorney for the Bosnia indictment. In total, Groome led the prosecution of five international criminal trials including the case against Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide for the murder of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. He led eight large complex international investigations of senior military, political, and police officials. Groome’s cases all included crimes of sexual violence against women, men, and children. He was instrumental in the development of Joint Criminal Enterprise, a theory of criminal responsibility often used to assess the culpability of senior officials for the crimes committed by their subordinates. Two documentaries have been made about Professor Groome’s cases: The Trial of Ratko Mladić (PBS/Frontline 2019) and Crimes Before the ICTY: Višegrad (UN TV 2017).