This work deals with some of the historical, social and political events that led to the Rwanda’s genocide, in 1994, and to the creation by the UN Security Council of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (hereinafter ICTR). It contains a translation and an analysis of some paragraphs of the judgment delivered by the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR on October 10th 2000 (“Jean Kambanda vs the Prosecutor”). In this judgment, the Prosecutor discusses at length the question of the conditions for the validity of the appellant’s guilty plea. ICTR’s works officially ended on 31 December 2015. To complete the judicial and administrative works left open by both the ICTR and the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), the UN Security Council established the ‘Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals’. Issues relating to international crime law and the meaning of national and international will be briefly discussed.