ABSTRACT
The Bureau des Avocats Intemationaux (BAI) is a group of lawyers funded by the Haitian government that assists the judiciary with human rights cases, mostly from Haiti's 1991-94 de facto military dictatorship. The de facto dictatorship ousted Haiti's first freely elected government in September, 1991. Over the next three years, the military and its paramilitary allies murdered an estimated 5,000 civilians, and beat, raped or otherwise tortured hundreds of thousands more. The Haitian government formed the BAI both to help victims of the coup obtain justice and to assist the overall effort to improve the justice system. The BAI's judicial assistance complements and supplements other efforts, such as Haiti's Ecole de la Magistrature (Judicial Academy). The BAI is helping train a new generation of human rights lawyers through its programs for Haitian law graduates and US law students. The Raboteau trial was completed in November of 2000, and is considered by far the best legal proceeding in Haitian history.
