Tag Archives: TJ Monitor

TJ Monitor: Nigerian abductions reinforce the value of collective advocacy

Blog, ,
Women march in Abuja following the abduction of over 200 school girls by Boko Haram rebels. Picture courtesy of AFP.

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Lina Zedriga Waru for the next issue of Voices. Lina is a passionate advocate for the greater involvement of women in building and sustaining peace. We talked at length about how during the 2006-2007 Juba peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the LRA she and others rallied to have the then neglected voices of women heard during the negotiations. Eventually hundreds of women of different ethnicity and backgrounds, from different parts of Uganda and other countries were mobilised to travel to Juba and join the talks.

“It was so powerful that when we reached Gulu, the President himself, who had refused to see us, decided to fly to Gulu to meet us,” she said, “The fact that we came from beyond [Acholi] demanding that this war must end and demanding that peace must be given a chance was very powerful.”

The women’s “march to Juba” was an incredible success and eventually culminated with the handing over of a symbolic “peace torch” from the contingent of women to Riek Machar, who was then the mediator of the peace talks. Most significantly, elements of the calls their group made in the “Women’s Protocol for Peace” that they delivered in Juba were included in the final written agreement.

While discussing the value of collective advocacy by women, we also discussed the recent abduction of over 200 Nigerian school girls in the north of the country by Boko Haram rebels as well as the efforts by groups of women, including the mothers of the missing, to draw attention to it. Sympathy has poured out from all around the world and many have observed that it harkens back to the dark times during the LRA conflict when students were abducted from their schools in northern Uganda. The abductions from in St. Mary’s College, Aboke in 1996, Sacred Heart Secondary School in 1993, and Lacor Seminary in 2003, and Sir Samuel Baker Secondary School in 1996, like the Nigerian situation, raised the profile of the conflict and drew scrutiny to the role of governments and other humanitarian actors.

The Nigerian government has been criticised for its lack of action in retrieving the girls, as well as the mixed messages it has given about their being rescued.  Lina Zedriga Waru observed that situations like this reflect the importance of utilising collective advocacy to draw the public’s attention to issues and to get governments and other actors to act. A series of activities that can sustainably and continuously draw attention to what is going on is vital, she says. A crucial element, though, is that advocates should make sure that they provide alternative solutions to the problems they are advocating to address, and to ensure that they work to recruit allies with a common vision. Most importantly they should relate the issue to the public as much as possible. Women advocates, she says, act as a support to the government by representing the concerns of communities.

The next issue of Voices (on gender justice and sexual and gender-based violence) will be out at the end of May.

TJ Monitor: ICC judgment against Katanga shows that the battle for accountability of sexual crimes in conflict is not yet won

Blog, ,

On the 7th of March 2014, Germain Katanga was found guilty by the International Criminal Court as an accessory within the meaning of article 25(3)(d) of the Rome Statute for one crime against humanity (murder) and four war crimes (murder, pillaging, destruction of property, attacking a civilian population) in the district of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003

Katanga was, however, not found guilty as an accessory to sexual slavery as a war crime under article 8(2)(b)(xxii), sexual slavery as a crime against humanity under article 7(1)(g), rape as a war crime under article 8(2)(b)(xxii), and rape as a crime against humanity under article 7(1)(g) of the Statute. The role of the prosecutor was to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a crime was committed, but in this case, she was unable to do so for sexual crimes in this trial. This shows the continued frustration of achieving convictions for sexual crimes especially in a region like Ituri where sexual offences are prevalent.

Many would argue that there have been great strides on prosecuting sexual crimes since the historic International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda case of Prosecutor vs Jean-Paul Akayesu which created a foundation for the codification of sexual crimes in international law.  Rules of procedure have been revised to be inclusive and friendly to the prosecution of SGBV, best practices have been adopted by international tribunals, prosecutors and investigators have received trainings and a lot of advocacy has been conducted on the need to prosecute SGBV cases. The office of the Prosecutor at the ICC has appointed a gender adviser and there exists a gender unit and they recently released a draft policy paper on sexual and gender based crimes.

As such, today there should not be inadequate investigations into or presentation of evidence in court of SGBV related crimes or presentation of evidence in court of SGBV related crimes. Currently there have been no convictions by the ICC on SGBV related crimes and as of 2011 only 41 out 71 indictments that had sexual crimes resulted in convictions at the ICTR, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or  the Special Court for Sierra Leone ( according to the progress on women report 2010/11 by UNWOMEN). Basically, much has not changed since.

In northern Uganda these gaps are glaring. Only one out of the five arrest warrants issued by ICC had the charge of sexual slavery and among the 53 counts brought against Thomas Kwoyelo by the International Crimes Division of the Ugandan High Court, none was for SGBV.

The prosecution reluctance and/or inability to build up concrete cases on SGBV is also worrying. We realize SGBV is not an easy crime to investigate but we also acknowledge the harm caused to victims and their desire to get justice. The prosecutors and investigators have a responsibility to be vigilant and aggressive in building up such cases. Creativity should also be called upon if we are to succeed.

Ultimately, this judgment is a set back on the victims of SGBV in Ituri. As we have seen more resources put in by the office of the prosecutor to assist in the investigation of such crimes, we hope that in the proceeding judgments, more accountability for SGBV will be realized.

TJ Monitor: what Kenya’s withdrawal from the ICC would mean for transitional justice

Blog,

A few weeks ago we blogged about African leaders and their increasingly apprehensive stance towards the International Criminal Court. Just a few days ago – a week before the trial of the Deputy President of Kenya, William Ruto, began at The Hague – members of Kenya’s parliament voted to withdraw the country from being a party to the international court.

Ruto was charged with the crimes against humanity of murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population and persecution for acts organised during the election violence that occurred in Kenya in 2007 and 2008.

The countries current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, was also charged with crimes against humanity and his trial is set to begin in November.

What message does the potential withdrawal of one of the more prominent African state-parties to the Court’s statute send for accountability and transitional justice in the region?

The result of ongoing investigations and indictments by the ICC has been that African leaders, under the auspices of the African Union, have felt targeted by the Court and went as far as arguing that the ICC is biased against them. Critics of the Court have also accused it of being racist, imposing Western imperialism and harbouring anti-African sentiments.

If the Court is perceived to be biased against African countries, it is probably because all of the seven investigations it is currently conducting are for crimes allegedly committed in African states. The majority of the on-going investigations, however, were actually referred to the Court by the member states themselves. The Court is also conducting preliminary investigations in eight countries –which include Gambia and Nigeria.

Some argue that “home grown” solutions would be more effective in dealing with African cases. But international tribunals are only one aspect of accountability – being a party to the ICC does not mean countries are inhibited from pursuing their own national and regional forms of accountability, whether in the form of truth and reconciliation commissions or national trials, for instance. The Court, after all, was famously founded based on a principle of complementarity – meaning that it exists to support, but not take away the sovereignty of its member states.

If Kenya withdrew its support for the Court it would mean that individuals responsible for acts of impunity would have one less powerful check to keep them accountable for their acts and, therefore, less be deterred from committing mass atrocities.

Also, an indictment by the ICC does not guarantee that the accused person will be convicted. The presentation of evidence and arguments by both sides as well cross-examination of witnesses during a trial could contribute to the revelation of important details about the occurrences in question. Since truth-telling is an important component of transitional justice, a country that does not participate as a whole would deny itself an opportunity for the lessons that can learned from the process.

Another important aspect of Kenya’s withdrawal is that, as a leader in the region, this could set a precedent for more withdrawals by other African countries. This is a problem because the ICC, and international law as a whole, is built on the support of states that are party to its founding international law agreement. Without the support of state parties, the court would be weak and ineffective since countries would not have any legal obligation to implement its decisions.

We’ll be following the trial and other developments at The Hague in the TJ Monitor. Check back later for more!

TJ Monitor: Children and the draft Transitional Justice Policy – is there hope for children born in captivity?

Blog

When I chanced on Jean De La Croix Tabaro’s article on the dilemma of children born of rape in the Rwandan genocide, I couldn’t help but think about our own children in northern Uganda born as a result of rape, forced marriage, forced pregnancy and sexual slavery during the 20 year conflict. At the height of the conflict, thousands of women and girls were abducted and forced to become wives to rebel commanders while in captivity and as a result they begot children by these commanders. At the same time, many of the women and girls who were displaced in Internally Displaced Peoples’ camps were raped and forced to become wives to Government soldiers wherein they begot children.

When the conflict ended, the women returned home with these children amidst challenges way too remote for mainstream transitional justice (TJ) to address such as identities issues i.e. tracing for the identities of the paternal clans/families of the children. This has been complicated more by the fact that the “bush husbands” did not reveal to the women their real names, clans or the physical locations of their homes. The women and girls who lived in IDP camps are facing similar challenges. All the government soldiers (UPDF) who raped and forced the women and girls into “marriage” have since then been re-deployed to other locations or are dead, in both circumstances automatically shifting parental responsibility on the women who survive by engaging in petty activities to barely make ends meet, having lost the opportunity to earn an education in order to favourably compete for rewarding jobs.

Recently, the Government of Uganda through the Justice, Law and Order Sector (JLOS) released a draft national TJ Policy in response to Uganda’s legacy of past violations and to provide accountability and reconciliation through a combination of justice mechanisms. Whereas the policy makes reference to children as a vulnerable group, this reference seems to mirror child survivors per se but not children born as a result of the violations and abuses. This lack of distinction removes children born in captivity/displacement out of the picture thus leaving their needs and concerns unmet, which seems like a time bomb ticking away.

The identity of many children born in captivity or displacement has not been established, so acquiring something as simple as a birth certificate for them is a challenge for them. Likewise since the identity of their fathers, clans, families and place of origin is unknown all the responsibility for these children is placed on their mothers who cannot adequately provide for their basic needs such as shelter, feeding, clothing, education and medical care. This in effect has left them without hope.

In order to respond to the specific needs of the children born in captivity/displacement, it is imperative for Government to address the issue of identity of the children. A policy should be made to expedite and simplify registration of the children for purposes of obtaining birth certificates since the process has proved to be a nightmare for women survivors who do not know the details of the fathers of their children besides the date, month, year and place of birth. In implementing the reparation mechanism, it is recommended that the children born in captivity/displacement should be considered in a separate group to ensure that their needs and concerns are addressed otherwise they might end up picking bread crumbs from under the tables.

TJ Monitor: The ICC and Africa – Impunity vs Self-interest

Blog

When the Rome statute entered into force on the 1st of July 2002, the International Criminal Court was born with the objective to help end impunity for perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. The said crimes include war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crime of aggression. This move by the international community was particularly embraced by many African countries which without much ado pledged their support for it by signing the treaty their by becoming member states. The following chronicle may be useful background to the ensuing discussion.

The African states were at the forefront of discussions and endorsement of a permanent international criminal court.  Senegal was the first country to ratify the Rome statute. In fact we have over 33 member states of the Rome statutes from Africa,  making it the continent with the biggest block membership.

In December 2003, the President of the Republic of Uganda, Yoweri K. Museveni took the decision to refer the situation concerning the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to the office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, this led to the issuance of warrants of arrest for the top five commanders of the LRA – Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya. Vincent Otti and Raska Lukwiya have since died leaving the other three still at large.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also referred its situation to the office of the Prosecutor where five cases were brought before the relevant chambers to wit Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Bosco Ntaganda, Germain Katanga, Mathieu Ngudjola Chui, Calixte Mbarushimana and Sylvester Mudacumura. Thomas. Lubanga has since been convicted, Germain Katanga remains in custody while Mathieu Ngudjola has been acquitted. And of recent Ntaganda surrendered to the ICC and is now facing trial in The Hague.

In December 2004, the Government of the Central African Republic (CAR) referred the situation in CAR to the ICC, after which the prosecutor opened an investigation in May 2007 resulting in The Prosecutor v Jean Pierre Bemba Gombo.

Following in the footsteps of her “sister countries” on the 16th Jan 2013, Mali referred the situation in West African nation to the ICC. This led to the opening of an investigation into alleged crimes committed on the territory of Mali since 2012.

Although Cote d’Ivoire is not a party to the Rome statute, it accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC on the 18th April 2003 which was reconfirmed on both 14th Dec 2010 and 3rd May 2011.

It should be noted that the above were willfully referred to the ICC by the various African states based on the perception that the ICC would provide a lasting solution to ending internal and external threats to governments by warding off would be party spoilers (rebels with intentions of toppling governments and creating instability).

A change of attitude towards the ICC came when the Court issued warrants of arrest for sitting Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir in 2008 for crimes committed in the Darfur region. In 2010, the court agreed to the prosecutor’s request to open investigation in Kenya resulting to the indictment of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto who are currently the president and deputy president of Kenya. In 2011 and 2012 arrest warrants were issued for the former president of Cote D’ Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo and the countries’ First Lady Simone Gbagbo respectively.

Since then, African leaders have come together as one under the African Union to condemn the once desirable ICC and accuse it of conducting a “race hunt”. In their search for an escape, they are now proposing an ‘African’ response to international crimes in the ambit of existing regional legal structures like the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The question is whether this is a move motivated by genuine complaints of discrimination or protection of individual interests. You be the judge!

TJ Monitor: The Ugandan draft Transitional Justice Policy 2013

Blog

A case of courting survivors of conflict or accountability at last?

The Government of Uganda through the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS) has reached a milestone by pulling a draft National TJ Policy, a first of its kind in Africa and the world at large. This policy is in response to Uganda’s legacy of past violations and seeks to provide accountability and reconciliation through a combination of justice mechanisms including formal criminal prosecutions, traditional justice, truth-telling and reconciliation, reparations and amnesty.

The policy comes alive in the interventions proposed in the above mentioned TJ mechanisms. The first pertains to the formal justice process which relates to securing victims’ participation in the trial process. The policy proposes to ensure witnesses to trials are protected, borrowing from precedents of witness protection from countries like the US that have formal witness protection programmes. Witness protection as it is involves much more than just posting a police officer or a security agent to the home of a witness for purposes of ensuring his or her protection before, during and after trial, not to mention the financial resources it requires. Considering that war crimes trials involve no less than hundreds of witnesses who in most cases come from the same community as the perpetrators facing trial, this would automatically dictate that witnesses be given new identities and  be relocated forthwith –  all of which have deep financial implications. Is the Government prepared to employ other evidentiary techniques like voice recordings bearing in mind the rights of an accused person to confront his or her accuser?

The TJ Policy under this mechanism further proposes to remove barriers to access to justice by victims. As we try to get inside the heads of the drafters of the policy, we are inclined to suppose this to include putting an end to impunity to sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) committed during conflict by charging perpetrators of sexual violence with SGBV crimes besides other war crimes.

Under the truth-telling process, Government proposes to establish and implement a national truth telling process which should consider the unique gender needs and concerns of the survivors such as conducting separate truth telling sessions for women and male survivors of sexual violence and child victims.

Under reparations, Government proposes to establish and implement a reparations programme for victims of conflict which too is expected to respond to the unique gender needs and concerns of survivors following their commitment to mainstream gender in to the proposed mechanisms. It is expected that such a programme will have due regard to unique circumstances such as the needs of women survivors who returned home with children born in captivity or in internally displaced peoples’ camps as a result of forced marriage, rape, forced pregnancy or sexual slavery and male survivors who lost all their property in the wake of the conflict thus rendering them incapable of providing for their families and child headed families among others.

The traditional justice system under this draft policy has been recognised by the Government as a tool for conflict resolution, it remains to be seen how they intend to operationalise it especially where it involves victims and perpetrators hailing from different cultural settings or background. How does the Government of Uganda intend to harmonise the different cultural practices?

Acknowledging that each of the mechanisms have pros and cons, the notion of complimentarity comes in handy. In essence the mechanisms are meant to complement each other to ensure accountability and reconciliation. The challenges notwithstanding, the draft TJ Policy seems like the most appropriate response to past violations of human rights in Uganda, we only pray that this is not another case of courting victims, but rather spells accountability for victims of conflict.

Louis Montt’s conviction is a light at the end of the “justice” tunnel

Blog

TJ MONITOR

After decades of suffering and hoping for vindication, the people of Guatemala were relieved on 10th of May 2013 when the Supreme Court convicted the former dictator Louis Raois Montt (1982-1983) for orchestrating crimes of genocide against ethnic Maya Ixil. The ruling was the state’s official acknowledgement that genocide occurred in the 36 year civil war that ended with peace accords in 1996. It was also the first time such a sentence for genocide was ever handed down against a former Latin American leader in his own country. The road to Justice for the Guatemalans was not a smooth one; it was dogged by legal technicalities that led to suspension of the trial for 12 days amid appeals which at times appeared to be headed for annulment. However, as belligerent as it was, the trial bore its desired fruits for the victims/survivors of mass violations.

This trial is a testament of how long international justice may take. Indeed we have witnessed the challenges faced by victims seeking redress for international crimes. Often it takes decades before they can obtain a sense of justice, the trial is then riddled with many legal technicalities which often delay the trial or result to either annulments or stay of proceedings.

This is very similar to our situation in northern Uganda. No one has been put on trial for atrocities committed to civilians in the war between the LRA and the government. The cases before the ICC are pending waiting for the capture of Joseph Kony, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo. Since the establishment of the International Crimes Division of the High Court of Uganda no trial has commenced since the Kwoyelo case is suspended due to constitutionally raised issues. In a nutshell, the victims of this war feel like mainstream justice is useless.

However, the conviction of Rios Montt for crimes he committed decades ago, gives rise to hope that no matter how many years have passed, it is still possible to get justice. As human rights activists in Guatemala summed it as a historic moment for victims/survivors of a three decade brutal civil war, now they can feel a sense of Justice, the relief of having had a chance to be heard. This conviction is testimony that no matter the time it takes, justice is still a possibility and victims vigour is required at all times.