IJM’s founder Gary Haugen was a human rights lawyer working for the U.S. Department of Justice when the United Nations asked him to lead its investigation of the horrific genocide that engulfed Rwanda.

As Gary dug through mass graves and massacre sites, he remembers being struck by the terrible truth: the Rwandans who had perished in the violence “did not need someone to bring them a sermon, or food, or a doctor, or a teacher, or a microloan. They needed someone to restrain the hand with the machete, and nothing else would do.”

Compelled by the urgent needs he saw and inspired by his faith, Gary envisioned a new kind of human rights organisation: a group that would leverage the skills of criminal justice professionals to protect the poor from violent oppression.

Gary left his job and launched International Justice Mission in 1997. He and a small team took on cases of desperate violence where impoverished victims could not depend on their justice systems to defend them.

They met with obstacles and challenges. They faced disbelief that broken public justice systems could ever protect poor children, women and men. But slowly, the team saw their vision begin to take hold: rapists went to jail for assaulting impoverished children; families were freed from generations of slavery; young girls were rescued from the traffickers who sold them for sex.

Today, we've seen entire communities transformed.