War Crimes Prosecution Watch

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)

Official Website of the Extraordinary Chambers
Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Official Website of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT)

Khmer Rouge leader denies role in atrocities
Gulf Times
July 21, 2007

PAILIN, Cambodia: Defiant to the end, former Khmer Rouge leaders have shrugged off the threat of jail as Cambodia moves toward holding genocide trials, saying they had no hand in the mass deaths that occurred here in the late 1970s.

“I was not involved in the killing of people,” the regime’s most senior surviving leader, Nuon Chea, said at his modest wooden home in northwest Cambodia, where he has lived since defecting to the government in 1998.

He said he “felt no differently” after prosecutors filed cases against five people earlier this week at a special UN-backed court to try former Khmer Rouge leaders. The names of the five have not been made public.

“I don’t know who was responsible” for the deaths, he said, but added that he was sure he was among the people to be investigated.

“I know I’m included because the five suspects are high-ranking leaders,” he said.
“I’m ready to explain myself to the court when it summons me.”

Nearly 30 years after the Khmer Rouge were pushed from power and following a decade of contentious negotiations, Cambodia appears poised to finally seek justice for the crimes committed during the regime’s 1975-79 rule.

Up to 2mn people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed under the communist Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, schools and currency, exiling millions to vast collective farms with the aim of creating an agrarian utopia.

These crimes were part of a “common criminal plan constituting a systematic and unlawful denial of basic rights,” prosecutors said in a statement.

“Those responsible for these crimes and policies included senior leaders” of the regime, they added after submitting more than 14,000 pages of documents as evidence.

“I know what I did,” said Khieu Samphan, a French-educated intellectual who as head of state was the face of the Khmer Rouge to the outside world, dismissing accusations that he had knowledge of the atrocities.

“Since the court has not convicted me, it means that I am not guilty,” he said from his home in Pailin - an isolated gem-mining town which was one of the last Khmer Rouge strongholds.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal has been underway for a year, but Wednesday’s case submissions were the most significant step taken yet toward actually bringing defendants to the dock.

The cases have to be reviewed by co-investigating judges - one Cambodian and one foreign - who will then recommend whether suspects can be tried.

But Nuon Chea said he doubted the court’s ability to hold fair trials because he did not trust its foreign judges.

The trials are to be held under a complex power-sharing arrangement between foreign and Cambodian jurists that is meant to keep either side from exerting undue influence amid concerns of political influence and judicial incompetence.

“I believe in the Cambodian judges. ... But the foreign judges do not understand Democratic Kampuchea well,” Nuon Chea said, using the revolutionary name given to Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.

“Will I receive justice or not, I don’t know ... the facts are with the Cambodian people and I believe they will find justice for me,” he said from his home, just outside Pailin.
Trials are expected next year in what many see as the last chance for Cambodians to get justice for crimes committed by the regime.

So far only one possible defendant is in custody - former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kang Kek Ieu, also known as Duch.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and rights groups and legal advocates are concerned that other ageing figures from the regime will also die before being brought to court.

“I will not die before the trial,” Nuon Chea vowed, although he added: “I am really sick and my health is deteriorating.” - AFP

Time for Answers Arrives at 'Killing Fields' Trial
IPS International
Marwaan Macan-Markar
July 25, 2007

BANGKOK, Jul 25 (IPS) - For nearly 30 years, the Khmer Rouge regime that unleashed a reign of terror during it rule of Cambodia in the 1970s has been accused of committing genocide. But was this so?

An answer to that troubling question is slated for scrutiny as the war-crimes tribunal gets under way. Jul. 18 marked a milestone in this long-delayed trial, when prosecutors in the United Nations-sponsored special court submitted the names of five Khmer Rouge leaders to stand trial.

''Describing the acts committed in Cambodia as genocide has always been controversial. It is not easily accepted by the legal community,'' Rupert Skilbeck, head of the Defence Support Section of the tribunal, said in a telephone interview from Phnom Penh. ''The court will have to consider this question.''

The accepted definition of genocide is an act of violence aimed to ''destroy an ethnic group because of their nationality, race, religion,'' added the lawyer from Britain, who has also served as the advisor for the defence during the special war-crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone. ''Killing a people for their political views as happened in Cambodia is different.''

There are other questions, too, that the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), as this tribunal is officially called, is expected to answer. Foremost among them is how many people the Khmer Rouge killed between Apr. 17, 1975, and Jan. 6, 1979, the period of this brutal regime's rule and the period that the ECCC is examining.

''The number of people who died in Rwanda was not challenged, but the number of deaths in Cambodia has not been confirmed; it could be challenged,'' Skilbeck said earlier this month when he met journalists in Bangkok. In the African nation, there were an estimated 800,000 people from the ethnic Tutsi community who were slaughtered by Hutu extremists during the Rwandan civil war. That act of genocide occurred in 1994.

The Khmer Rouge has been accused of killing close to 1.7 million Cambodians, which was a quarter of the South-east Asian nation's population at the time. The victims were either executed or they died as a result of forced labour or starvation from famine as this Maoist group tried to turn the country into an agrarian utopia.

The tribunal's attempt to shed light on these mass deaths may also prove embarrassing to major powers that were involved during the years when Cambodia was dragged into the U.S. war in Vietnam, which raged through the 1960s and early 1970s, and after. The Washington-approved bombing raids over Cambodia have been documented, so has the role Beijing played to prop up the Khmer Rouge as it pursued its policy of slaughter.

''America's illegal bombing raids will come up in figuring out how many died in Cambodia,'' says Skilbeck. ''There will be lots of issues that will come up during the trial that will be embarrassing to many countries.''

The quest for justice to try those responsible for this country's ''Killing Fields'' got under way 10 years ago, when talks began between the UN and Phnom Penh to set up the ECCC. But this journey since 1997 faced many hurdles, including those placed by the Cambodian government, which has been under the firm grip of Prime Minister Hun Sen for decades.

Hun Sen has not only backtracked on financial commitments to the tribunal but has also heaped scorn on human rights groups who have challenged Phnom Penh's choice of judges for the war-crimes trial. The ECCC, unlike other tribunals, such as the one that investigated crimes against humanity committed in former Yugoslavia, is not completely international in nature. It combines local and foreign jurists.

In fact, the ECCC is also expected to bring to the fore a question related to these very Cambodian lawyers and judges. It stems from concerns by human rights groups about the Cambodian jurists' grasp and application of international law, which will be the basis of the tribunal's proceedings.

After all, the country's legal community was equally brutalised by the Khmer Rouge as other professional groups. The educated men and women became key targets of the extreme Maoists, who deemed intellectuals as enemies of the state after declaring its first phase of power as the ''Year Zero.'' Only nine lawyers and judges survived the years of terror, according to some estimates.

For the Cambodians who survived the brutality of the late 1970s or who are among the millions who lost relatives to the Khmer Rouge, there are equally relevant questions they hope the ECCC will help answer. ''Many people want to know why the Khmer Rouge killed their own people and how they were killed,'' says Im Sophea, a ranking member of the Centre for Social Development, a Phnom Penh-based non-governmental body. ''We expect the court to reveal answers for this. Public expectation is very high.''

The events over the past week have triggered new interest in the trial among people in the city and in rural areas, Im said in a telephone interview from the Cambodian capital. ''They feel the wait for answers is finally over.''

Of course the trial will not hear from Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, who died in 1998. Nor will Ta Mok, widely known in Cambodia as "The Butcher" for the atrocities he committed during the brutal regime's rule, take the stand; he died in June last year.

The five names submitted last week to stand trial at the ECCC were major figures in the Maoist group. According to reports in the Cambodian press, they include Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's deputy; Khieu Samphan, former head of state during the Khmer Rouge years; Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister; and Kang Kech Eav, also known as Duch, who was the head of he infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. (END/2007).

Unique Pol Pot survivor
Bangkok Post / DPA
Bronwyn Sloan
July 2007

The only woman know to have survived Pol Pot's infamous Toul Sleng torture centre, Chim Math broke her silence Tuesday after nearly 30 years, saying she wants to testify at an impending trial of Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge leaders.

The 49-year-old becomes the first woman and among only eight known survivors entered the gates of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's S-21 secret prison, where an estimated 14,000 people perished.

She says now: "I can't describe what I saw there. I could look out of my cell through cracks in the wall and see the torture and the bodies being thrown away like rubbish. For two weeks, that was my television. The smell of pig excrement mixed with blood which was S-21 will never leave me."

"This is a real breakthrough," David Chandler, a historian and author of "Voices From S-21," replied in an email Tuesday.

Previously, only three men were believed to still be alive as the 56-million dollar joint UN-Cambodia trial of a handful of surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge's brutal Democratic Kampuchea regime looms.

Former commandant of S-21, Kang Kech Ieu, alias Duch, is the only person currently in jail awaiting a decision by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia on indictments.

Documentation Center of Cambodia director Youk Chhang confirmed that records had been recovered from Toul Sleng proving Math had been held at the former school that became one of the epicentres of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Chhang said Math had previously denied she had been held at the prison, possibly out of fear. Math says she kept her story secret because it was too difficult to tell.

"I didn't tell anyone all these years. Not even my husband. It was too painful," Math said as she stared at her picture taken by her captors, among more than one thousand images documenting the victims of the slaughter that took place in S-21 between 1975 and 1979.

"Now the trial is coming, my family has persuaded me to come forward so I can be an eyewitness and help my country."

Known as Khem Math at the time of her October 10, 1978 arrest, she says she was held in S-21 for two weeks before being transferred to nearby Prey Sar prison, which she escaped from to run to the mountains of Kampong Speu province when Vietnamese-backed troops overthrew the Khmer Rouge on January 7, 1979.

Math thinks she may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom, prison chief Duch's place of birth.

She held a copy of a Khmer Rouge document showing she joined the movement in 1974 as a 16-year-old. Above her picture is a stamp from S-21 in Khmer script. At the bottom corner of the page, a blank space remains next to the column grimly titled "date of death".

Up to 2 million Cambodians are believed to have died during the four-year reign of the Khmer Rouge as the ultra-Maoists attempted to turn the country into an agrarian utopia, bereft of markets, money and social classes.

Math says two photos she kept with her of her father dressed in a Lon Nol-era police uniform had led to her arrest during a period when the south-western zone, led by former military commander Ta Mok, began conducting internal purges.

Court officials say they hope hearings will get underway by early next year. Pol Pot died at his home in 1998 without facing trial. Ta Mok died in hospital of age-related complications last year.

Researchers say Math's testimony will shed invaluable light on the conditions inside S-21 for female prisoners, about which little was previously known.

Putting the Khmer Rouge on Trial
Time Magazine
By Kevin Doyle
July 26, 2007

At 82, Nuon Chea's eyesight is failing and most days he sports large, dark sunglasses. What remains of his white hair is slicked back in strands and though his breath labors painfully at times, he can still sit upright and at full attention for hours when discussing his role in Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime. A former chief lieutenant to leader Pol Pot, Nuon Chea is the highest-ranking Khmer Rouge member still alive — and the key figure in a coming courtroom showdown that international and Cambodian prosecutors hope will hold the remnants of the regime accountable for the estimated 2 million deaths that occurred during their bloody reign in the late 1970s.

It's a trial that has long been coming. After Cambodia appealed for international assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal in 1997, it took another nine years of governmental foot-dragging and tortuous negotiations with the United Nations over the shape and structure of the court before prosecutors and judges were sworn in last July. Since then, the proceedings have encountered months of legal wrangling and administrative delays, leading to concerns that the few surviving Khmer Rouge leaders could die of old age before being brought to justice.

This month, however, seems to mark a point of no return. On July 18, prosecutors submitted the names of five possible suspects to the court's investigating judges. That list has not been released to the public, though it's widely assumed to consist of elderly regime leaders like Nuon Chea, who have lived in quiet retirement since abandoning their movement in the late 1990s after reaching a peace deal with the government.
For his part, Nuon Chea is sure his name is at the top of the list. With the death of Pol Pot in 1998, he admits that he is now "responsible for everything that happened."
"I consider this court a battlefield fight between patriots and invaders. I will not allow anyone defeat me," the former communist revolutionary says, speaking from his small wooden house in Pailin on the Thai border in northwest Cambodia. If called before the court, he plans to explain that the killings were "not a policy" of the regime, a line all former Khmer Rouge leaders have stuck to. Nuon Chea rejects the idea that the fanatical legions of young Maoist rebels he led during the 1970s executed thousands and dumped them in mass graves, or that hundreds of thousands more were worked to death, succumbing to starvation and disease in the countryside after being forced to labor day and night to build the Khmer Rouge's vision of an ideologically pure agrarian society. Publicly he will only say that "mistakes" were made under the Khmer Rouge, and still speaks proudly of his former boss, Pol Pot. He has hinted that the skulls and bones in Cambodia's thousands of mass graves could merely be those of Cambodians killed by U.S. bombing during the civil war of the 1970s or the Vietnamese incursion of 1979.
Nuon Chea is the most outspoken of the former Khmer Rouge leaders; other likely targets of the tribunal have taken a lower-key approach. Khieu Samphan, 76, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, lives near Nuon Chea in Pailin but has had little to say on the speculation that he is one of the five defendants. Ieng Sary, 78, the regime's former foreign minister, and his wife Ieng Thirith, 75, the former minister of social affairs, have also avoided the media. A young man who answered the door at their large house in a quiet neighborhood in central Phnom Penh said the couple had recently gone to Bangkok, where they frequently travel for medical treatment. Kang Kek Iev, 63, known as Duch when he headed the S-21 torture center in Phnom Penh where thousands were imprisoned and executed, is the sole regime member in prison. Now a born-again Christian, Duch has been held in pre-trial detention since 1999 after being discovered working for a local humanitarian organization.

With the names of the five suspects now in the hands of the investigating judges, the evidence will be analyzed — prosecutors have submitted 14,000 pages of documentation, including interviews with 350 witnesses — and a decision taken on whom to charge. That could happen as early as January 2008, with the first trials soon after, officials at the tribunal said. All that's needed now is just a little more patience, according to Youk Chhang, Cambodia's foremost researcher on the Khmer Rouge and head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. "This is a lesson we can learn from. Not just for Cambodia, but globally, as genocide seems to happen everywhere now," he says. "It's time for us to solve this and move on."

Former Khmer Rouge leaders set to face trial
Crimes Against Humanity; International Team Of Lawyers Submits Recommendations To Special Court
National Post (Canada)
Peter Goodspeed
July 27, 2007

Nearly 11 years after the international community began to press Cambodia to bring to justice those responsible for one of history's worst cases of genocide, the trials of the country's former Khmer Rouge leaders may be about to begin.

A team of Cambodian and international prosecutors, including Canadian lawyer Robert Petit of the Department of Justice's war crimes section, has submitted its recommendations to a special Cambodian court to try five Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity, genocide, murder, torture and religious persecution.

The charges stem from the extermination of about 1.7 million Cambodians -- 25% of the population -- in the country's "killing fields" from April, 1975, to January, 1979, when the Khmer Rouge were in power.

Although the crimes occurred 30 years ago, and despite a decade of tortuous negotiations and the establishment last year of a hybrid court made up of 17 Cambodian and 12 international judges, not a single case has yet come to trial.

Hun Sen, Cambodia's Prime Minister and a former Khmer Rouge military commander, has vacillated for years over what to do with the Khmer Rouge.

The Cambodian leader, who broke with the Khmer Rouge when he was about to be killed, has worried about sacrificing his country's sovereignty to international organizations and argued that war crimes prosecutions might plunge Cambodia into a renewed civil war.
That raised fears the ageing henchmen of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot would escape justice.

Pol Pot died in bed of natural causes in 1998 and his military chief, Ta Mok, died in 2006.
Several former Khmer Rouge leaders are still living quietly in Cambodia and only one, Kang Kech Eav -- also known as Duch and head of the infamous Tuol Sleng torture and execution centre--is in custody.

That may now be about to change. After a full year of investigation, Mr. Petit, a Montreal lawyer who has helped prosecute war crimes trials in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and East Timor, and his Cambodian co-prosecutor, Chea Leang, have presented the Cambodian court with documentation of "25 distinct factual situations of murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention, forced labour and religious, political and ethnic persecution."
The prosecutors have filed more than 1,000 documents containing 14,000 pages of statements and the records of 350 witnesses, along with thousands of pages of the Khmer Rouge's own meticulous notes to support their request for charges against the five Khmer Rouge.

Under the rules of the joint United Nations-Cambodian court, a team of judges will review the evidence submitted by the prosecutors and decide whether to proceed with a trial.
Until that decision is made, the court will not release the names of those to be charged, but they are likely to include: Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's deputy; Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state; Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister; and Kang Kech Eav, head of the Tuol Sleng prison.

Mr. Petit and Ms. Leang will have their work cut out for them prosecuting Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed more than a quarter of a century ago. But in preparing their case, they have discovered 40 undisturbed mass graves. A trial may "present issues with the state of memory and the state of documents, as well as the issue of the age of the perpetrators," Mr. Petit said.

But it remains important to give the Khmer Rouge's victims "a chance to stop being victims, to take control of what happened to them, by telling their story," he added. The international community has budgeted US$53-million over three years for trying the Khmer Rouge leaders.

The court has already used up a year of that mandate just setting out its rules and operating procedures. If it decides to proceed with the cases now presented by the prosecutors, the first trial could begin early next year.

Khmer Rouge Figure is First Charged with Atrocities
New York Times
By Seth Mydans
August 1, 2007

BANGKOK, July 31 — A tribunal in Cambodia charged the commandant of the main Khmer Rouge torture house with crimes against humanity on Tuesday, bringing the first charge in a long-delayed trial in the deaths of 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.
The commandant, Kaing Guek Eav, 64, known as Duch, was the leader of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh where at least 14,000 men, women and children were tortured and sent to killing fields. Only a handful survived.

Two weeks ago, prosecutors announced that they had submitted to the tribunal a list of five potential defendants for consideration by co-investigating judges, who are authorized to decide on filing formal charges.

The other four names have not been disclosed. In the charges on Tuesday, the judges said Duch had been placed in “provisional detention,” but did not explain. A small holding center was recently built on the grounds of the tribunal in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

Duch has been the only major Khmer Rouge figure in custody, in a military jail in Phnom Penh on separate charges, since 1999 when a British photographer discovered him in rural Cambodia. He was working for a government agency and had become a born-again Christian.

Because of his conversion, “He spoke candidly about his role as Pol Pot’s chief executioner,” said the photographer, Nic Dunlop, referring to the Khmer Rouge leader.
“If he remains true to his words and talks as openly as he did then, he can potentially throw huge light on areas of darkness that have eluded scholars for decades,” said Mr. Dunlop, who wrote about Duch in “The Lost Executioner.” Duch could offer damaging testimony against other potential defendants, who have denied or minimized their roles in the Khmer Rouge rule.

Nearly one-fourth of Cambodia’s population died under the Communist Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Many died of disease, overwork or starvation, or were killed outright.

Many, notably in Tuol Sleng prison, were accused of being enemies of the revolution and forced through torture to confess to often fantastic crimes before execution. Researchers have found written orders by Duch regarding torture and killings.

In a government interview in 1999, Duch called himself “an individual with gentle heart caring for justice,” according to a transcript quoted by The Associated Press.

“I was under other people’s command, and I would have died if I disobeyed it,” the transcript reads. “I did it without any pleasure, and any fault should be blamed on the leadership, not me.”

Pol Pot died in 1998 and other leaders have died without being tried. But some major figures live in Cambodia and are often mentioned as possible defendants.

Among them are Nuon Chea, the movement’s chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, former head of state; and Ieng Sary, former foreign minister. All were members of the Khmer Rouge central committee. All have denied responsibility for the crimes.

“All the former Khmer Rouge have different stories,” Mr. Dunlop said. Most of the leaders shift responsibility or deny it, he said. “Duch potentially could change all of that and provide evidence and testimony that could indict a lot of people in the Khmer Rouge leadership.”

In an interview in 1999 with Mr. Dunlop and Nate Thayer, a journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review, Duch said that top leaders knew what was occurring in Tuol Sleng, and he named names.

“The first was Pol Pot,” he said. “The second was Nuon Chea, the third Ta Mok,” the Khmer Rouge military leader who died last year. “Khieu Samphan knew of the killings, but less than the others.”

The Khmer Rouge Trials: Better Late than Never
The Economist
August 2, 2007

After years of frustrating delay, the first of Pol Pot's henchmen is charged

DEATH allowed Pol Pot and his military chief, Ta Mok, to cheat earthly justice for the enormities of their Khmer Rouge regime. But at last there seems, after years of delay, a real prospect of bringing to trial ageing survivors from the ghastly regime's top ranks. On July 31st judges at a United Nations-backed tribunal in Phnom Penh brought the first charges, of crimes against humanity, against Kang Kek Ieu, alias Duch, who ran Tuol Sleng, the regime's interrogation and torture centre in Cambodia's capital.
True to the stereotype of the coldly meticulous death-camp guard, Duch is said to have kept detailed notes of his work, which may now be used as evidence. Just as predictably, the defendant, now in his sixties and a born-again Christian, insists he was simply obeying orders. Prosecutors hope charges will also soon be brought against four other Khmer Rouge leaders.
Some Khmer Rouge figures have been living in tranquil liberty since reaching an accord in the 1990s with Hun Sen, Cambodia's long-serving prime minister. He was himself a lesser figure in the Khmers Rouges. But there is not thought to be any evidence linking him to the crimes of their 1975-78 reign of terror, when perhaps a quarter of the country's people were either slaughtered or died of starvation or exhaustion. The prime minister rejects accusations of obstructing the tribunal, and insists he is keen for the trials to go ahead.
Ten years have passed since Cambodia first asked the UN for help in creating a special court. In 2003, after years of haggling over how much control the UN would have over it, agreement was reached to create an unusual hybrid. Unlike previous tribunals, such as those for Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, the “Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia” has a majority of local judges. The judges and prosecutors were sworn in last year, but there ensued months of arguing over such things as court procedures and the swingeing fees that Cambodia's Bar Association wanted to charge foreign lawyers taking part in the proceedings.
The prosecutors have compiled thousands of pages of evidence including statements from hundreds of witnesses. They are expected to argue that the Khmers Rouges' mass slaughter amounted to genocide—and indeed the Cambodian government uses Tuol Sleng, now a grisly tourist attraction, as a “genocide museum”. But this will prove contentious, since the regime's fanatical Maoists mostly killed members of their own race. If nothing else goes wrong, trials could begin next year. But if they drag on or prove unexpectedly complex, the tribunal's $56m budget may prove insufficient, prompting further rows over money and perhaps yet more delays in bringing justice to the few senior members of the regime still alive.

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Central African Republic

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Cases: Central African Republic

Plight of Central African Republic - Feature
British Red Cross Society – UK, via Reuters
August 1, 2007

Conflict between government troops and armed groups is now in its second year causing at least 150,000 people to flee their homes into the forests. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) stepped up its operations in CAR in the last six months. British Red Cross delegate, Jessica Barry, went to the troubled country to find out more.

Surviving in the bush

Gérard Kembi Nangindo walked along a forest path one recent afternoon carrying an armful of short-handled iron hoes. Anxious birds called overhead and rain clouds gathered.

"This is where we fled to when our village was attacked," he said over his shoulder, "but it wasn't really safe and we could hear shooting, so we moved further away."

The attack he was referring to was one of many that took place last year along the road from Boguila to Paoua in north western CAR. Whole villages were emptied as families fled into the forest. Mr. Kembi took his sister and her family with him, as well as his mother and grandmother, great aunt, three cousins and their wives. Finally, they settled about two kilometres into the bush, close to their fields.

Refuge

The path through the forest was lined on either side with waist high grass and sweet smelling plants. Beyond, through the tangled undergrowth, ancient trees pushed skywards, creating a green canopy.

An open space appeared where the trees had been felled and the red earth turned. Instead of coolness and shade, the sun slanted down on scattered shoots of millet and maize, and a carpet of green groundnut leaves. In the distance could be glimpsed the tattered thatched roofs and grey tarpaulins of a forest encampment.

It was to this spot that 24-year-old Mr. Kembi was heading. The refuge is one of hundreds scattered across the region, sheltering thousands of displaced villagers who have fled the conflict between government troops and armed rebels, which is now in its second year.

Distribution

Mr. Kembi had collected the hoes he was carrying from the ICRC in the village of Bodoli earlier that day. They were a welcome addition to the battery of old tools he had been using to keep the forest at bay around his fields. But it is not only the encroaching undergrowth that the displaced need to watch out for in their makeshift bush shelters. A lack of clean water and adequate food are other major problems. In such precarious conditions, and without ready access to health care, even minor illnesses, cuts and burns can quickly worsen.

Children are especially at risk. In an effort to assist the most vulnerable, the ICRC has distributed buckets, blankets, tarpaulins, mosquito nets and other household items to some 8,000 families around Paoua and Markounda since last year. Another 5,500 families will receive similar items over the coming weeks.

The hoes which Gérard Kembi and over 400 families received in Bodoli are part of the same programme, which will have provided help to tens of thousands of displaced people all across north west CAR by the end of August.

Daunting

The logistics of the whole operation have been daunting. Heavy items such as blankets and tarpaulins are sent to CAR by plane from Nairobi. Others come by road from neighbouring
Cameroon. Locally available items such as soap and aluminum bowls are purchased on the spot.

We are working flat out on this job, but it is only when I take a day off that I feel tired

Ibrahim Al Abid, blacksmith in CAR

Everything then has to be transported by commercial truck along hundreds of kilometres of unmade, potholed roads from the capital, Bangui.

The 28,000 hoes that are required are being made in Paoua, where the ICRC established an office in April 2006.

The work is being done in a part of the town known as the 'blacksmiths' quarter'. The low, clattering forge is run by a foreman, Ibrahim Al Abid, and 23 apprentices. Mr. Al Abid learned the trade from his father and took over the business 16 years ago when he retired. The ICRC's huge order will provide a boost for the local economy, and the forge, which also makes and repairs all kinds of metal ware from spades to wheelbarrows to broken down cars.

"We are working flat out on this job," Ibrahim said poking at a coal fire kept red hot by an apprentice punching bellows." But it is only when I take a day off that I feel tired."

Needs

Although hoes might seem an insignificant item when compared with the enormity of people's needs in the bush, for those who have lost everything even a little counts.

While Mr. Kembi was in Bodoli for the distribution on 13 July, he showed two visitors his abandoned house. "Everything has been stolen," he said grimly, standing just inside the entrance to the small, mud brick dwelling. He made a sweeping gesture that took in the dark recesses of the room where a bamboo bookcase and thermos flask were the only furniture. On the wall was a religious tract with the words "Who can be afraid if God is with us?"

Closing the door again, he set off into the forest with his armful of hoes, his visitors following behind. When he reached the encampment, he greeted his wife and sister who was pounding manioc into flour in a large wooden pestle, laid down the tools, and went off to take a rest after his strenuous day.

The visitors stayed for a while. Then the storm clouds broke and it started to pour. As they set off along the forest path back to Bodoli they could see a naked child holding a hoe in each hand, oblivious to the rain, fascinated by these new playthings. The following day they would be put to better use weeding the groundnut fields.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Civilians in northwest still afraid of going home
IRIN
August 2, 2007

NAIROBI - Thousands of people who fled their homes in northwestern Central African Republic are reluctant to return despite improved security conditions, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

The 18-month conflict between government forces and the rebel Army for the Restoration of the Republic and Democracy (French acronym APRD) has displaced tens of thousands of people, especially around the towns of Kaga Bandoro and Paoua, according to aid workers.

Many villages have been burnt down, and possessions, crops and livestock stolen – prompting those displaced to seek shelter mostly in forests, close to their fields.

"Even though the security situation is now calmer, people from Bodoli – and other villages all along the route to Paoua town – still do not feel safe enough to return home," the ICRC said.

Conditions in the makeshift forest shelters, it added, were dire, with people living without enough food, often without clean water, and with virtually no way to get medical help.

At the start of the rainy season, roads turned into quagmires, making it more difficult to reach the displaced. On 9 July, for example, Red Cross workers had to dig their lorry out of the mud before they could reach the village of Boymadja.

"The combination of conflict and instability means that business and commerce are grinding to a halt," the ICRC, which is implementing a distribution programme targeting 100,000 people, said. "The future for the villagers living rough in the forests of northwest CAR looks more uncertain the longer they stay away from their permanent homes."

The APRD claims the CAR government toppled a legitimate government in March 2003, has mismanaged public funds and divided the nation. On 26 June, Amnesty International warned that the conflict-affected areas had become a free-for-all hunting ground for various armed opposition forces, government troops and even armed bandits.

The rebels, however, recently signed a peace agreement with the government.

Humanitarian agencies estimate that about 290,000 people have been forcibly displaced in CAR since the conflict began, including 26,000 who fled to Cameroon.

About 21,000 of the displaced in Cameroon went there in 2006, and the rest since then. Another 4,000 are expected to cross the border before the end of the year. On 31 July, Médecins Sans Frontières said among the displaced, children were suffering "alarming" malnutrition and needed immediate aid.

On 1 August, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator announced a US$2.3 million grant from the Central Emergency Response Fund, for life-saving programmes to address the emergency in CAR.

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Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

UN Seeks to Resolve Eastern Crisis
BuaNews (Tshwane) From AllAfrica.com
July 23, 2007

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for action to resolve the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) volatile eastern region.

"The Secretary-General is deeply concerned at the deteriorating security situation in the South and North Kivu provinces in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo," his spokesperson Michelle Montas said, pointing to the "dire humanitarian consequences" there.

To date, an estimated 700 000 people have been internally displaced.

Key players in the situation have been called on to use political measures to resolve the crisis, including by carrying out a comprehensive strategy aimed at ensuring the extension of State authority and the promotion of reconciliation, recovery and development in North and South Kivu.

"The Secretary-General urges the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and all concerned to pursue an inclusive dialogue in the Kivus," spokesperson Ms Montas said.

Mr Ban also called on regional and international partners to support efforts to ease tensions in the area, and encouraged the Governments of Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda to fully cooperate in addressing the root causes of instability.

South Africa has been heavily involved in post conflict reconstruction and development in the DRC, and was one of the key players in fostering the DRC's first democratic election held on 30 July 2006.

South African organisations printed the ballots, distributed them across the vast, resource rich nation and assisted with Information and Communication Technology support for the monitoring and counting process.

The DRC's election last year was the first in over 45 years, after the Mouvement National Congolais won the country's first free legislative elections in 1959, leading to the appointment as prime minister of the legendary anti-colonial leader, Patrice Lumumba.

The election followed five years of fighting in the country that borders nine countries - causing the deaths of as many as four million people - and which ended in 2003.
The DRC's newly-elected Parliament sat for the first time on February 13 this year.
During President Joseph Kabila's state visit to South Africa in June, President Thabo Mbeki said further assistance by South Africa with regard to reconstruction of the DRC and the consolidation of bilateral relations would take place within the context of a bi-national commission that is scheduled to begin work in earnest in August.

New Lubanga Judge Keen on DRC Trial
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Katy Glassborow
July 24, 2007

The new judge in the war crimes trial of Thomas Lubanga would like to conduct part of the proceedings in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, to make it more relevant to people affected by the crimes.

The ICC is based in The Hague in the Netherlands but Judge Adrian Fulford told IWPR, “I believe that in so far as it is practicable and appropriate, we should ensure trials at the ICC are relevant to the countries from which they emanate.”

As former leader of the Union des Patriotes Congolais, UPC, a Hema tribal militia, Lubanga was indicted by the ICC on suspicion of having conscripted and enlisted children to fight in bloody inter-ethnic fighting around the Ituri region of the DRC.

He was transferred from Kinshasa to The Hague in March 2006, and judges ruled in January that the evidence was sufficient to proceed to a full trial.

Judge Fulford, who was electing as presiding judge on July 12, told IWPR, “[There would be a] far greater degree of relevance if the trial is taken home so it can be witnessed first hand and become part of the life of the country where the critical events took place.”

The ICC is the world’s first permanent war crimes court and any country can sign up for it, and ask for help in investigating and prosecuting war crimes suspects.

The government of the DRC referred the situation there to the ICC in April 2004, and Judge Fulford is aware that security remains a concern due to persistent inter-ethnic tensions.

However, he insists that taking part of the trial home would make justice relevant to Congolese, and “stop this being distant and removed proceedings in northern Europe”.

Heeding lessons from the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the ICC is keen to involve victims as much as possible, so that the verdicts have a durable impact on the countries involved.

But the court is also trying to work as quickly as possible, and despite pre-trial judges giving the green light to a full trial of Lubanga, Judge Fulford said it would not start until the end of this year at the earliest.

Proceedings have stalled due to security issues in Ituri. Separately, the resignation of Lubanga’s defence lawyer Jean Flamme led to a period of negotiation between the court and his newly appointed lawyer Catherine Mabille over resources allocated to the defence.

Never before has an international tribunal given victims the opportunity to participate both during investigations into war crimes, and also in the trials of suspects.

Judge Fulford is aware that the extent to which victims participate could very well affect the trial’s length. There are also questions about what participation will actually mean.

According to the rules of the court, victims can apply to participate “where their personal interests are concerned”. They have to demonstrate they suffered the crimes which the accused is charged with.

“This will not necessarily lead to a three-party fight,” said Judge Fulford, because the court’s rules say any involvement by victims must not render the trial of the defendant unfair.

How much victim participation lengthens the trial depends on what they are allowed to do, and Judge Fulford says he is “extremely interested in the extent to which we can afford a real role for victims, whilst protecting the fair trial rights of the defendant”.

Because victims can potentially put questions to the accused in court, Judge Fulford conceded that there is a potential tension between the roles of the prosecution, defence and victims which trial judges “need to keep a clear eye on”.

Human rights groups have criticised the ICC for only accusing Lubanga of conscripting child soldiers, when they say he is responsible for a plethora of other crimes resulting from inter-ethnic fighting over access to gold, diamonds and timber since the late 1980s.

Pressure groups have campaigned for charges to be widened to encompass crimes of sexual violence. They say that when being questioned, former girl soldiers will mention experiences including rape, but these charges are not included in the indictment.

Judge Fulford said that criminal trials tend to be “organic in the way they develop”, and whether there is a later opportunity to amend charges during the life of the trial will be decided by the jurisprudence of - or precedents set by - the court. The court has considerable leeway in how it decides the trial should develop.

“We are starting not with an empty sheet of paper, but one with only a limited amount of writing on it,” said Judge Fulford.

He is also keen to explore different forms of collecting witness testimonies from the places the court operates.

A single judge could, for example, hear the evidence of a witness in the presence of lawyers for the prosecution, defence and victims, with the results incorporated into the trial.

“We need to explore what the most appropriate ways are for a modern international court to receive evidence,” he said.

There is an assumption that proceedings are going to be adversarial in as much as the lawyers for the prosecution, defence and victims present opposing arguments to judges, but Judge Fulford says this should not be assumed as a given.

“We have sufficient flexibility, and need to be responsive to the particular issues that arise with individual witnesses,” said the judge.

If the court had a procedure whereby witness testimonies were recorded in the DRC or any of the ICC’s situation countries under the supervision of judges, “we would thereby take a proactive role in how witnesses are dealt with,” he said.

The judges said the cross-examination of witnesses in court, which may be a useful tool in determining the truth, may not be the kindest process for psychologically damaged or fragile witnesses, “We have to make sure we are establishing for ourselves the best way to conduct these trials, and we are not excluding other options, and keep our eyes wide open to the different possibilities.”

A preliminary hearing will be held on September 4 to set a timetable for dealing with pretrial issues.

UN Accuses DRC of Excessive Force in Quashing Protests
Voice of America
By Lisa Schlein
July 28, 2007

A report Friday by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights accuses the Democratic Republic of Congo of using excessive force in putting down protests in the Bas-Congo province early this year. More than 100 people were reportedly killed during the clashes. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

The report says the Congolese military and police used excessive and indiscriminate lethal force in putting down demonstrations in the Bas-Congo that erupted January 31 and February 1. An opposition-religious group, called the Bundu Dia Kongo, were protesting against senatorial and gubernatorial elections it claimed were fraudulent when the clashes occurred.

U.N. Human Rights spokesman Jose Dias says U.N. rights monitors and a U.N. mission in the country investigated the events and found that at least 105 people, including six police officers and four soldiers, were killed. He says another 100 people were injured. "The high death toll, as I said, points to excessive use of lethal force by the national security force. The report goes on to say that while both sides share responsibility for the violence, the security forces have enjoyed impunity so far. The high commissioner deplores also that the trials are being conducted before military tribunals while many of the accused are civilians," he said.

Dias says this is a clear violation of international human rights standards. He says the U.N. High Commissioner, Louise Arbour, is calling on the authorities to bring to justice all those who had committed crimes during those events and to ensure that the trial on appeal is heard by civilian courts.

The U.N. inquiry acknowledges that, in some cases, the security forces probably fired in legitimate defense. But, in general, it says it appears fairly clear that the National Congolese Police and Armed Forces used excessive force in firing real bullets on the protesters who were only armed with sticks and stones.

Spokesman Dias says the U.N. Human Rights Monitors maintained contact with the Congolese government throughout the investigation. "I think the response that we got was less than satisfactory from the authorities. It was not optimal cooperation in the investigation," he said.

A report by a Congolese parliamentary commission in May concluded that security forces had acted against, what it calls, an illegal group. It says the group attacked the forces and committed murder, arson, looting and rape. Opposition lawmakers and human rights campaigners call the report a whitewash.

UN expert: Atrocities against Congolese women go ’far beyond rape’
By Associated Press, from the Boston Herald
July 30, 2007

GENEVA - Sexual atrocities in Congo’s volatile province of South Kivu extend "far beyond rape" and include sexual slavery, forced incest and cannibalism, a U.N. human rights expert said Monday.

Yakin Erturk called the situation in South Kivu the worst she has ever seen in four years as the global body’s special investigator for violence against women. Sexual violence throughout Congo is "rampant," she said, blaming rebel groups, the armed forces and national police.

"These acts amount to war crimes and, in some cases, crimes against humanity," said Erturk, who just came back from an 11-day mission there.

Most of the worst abuses have been committed by rebel groups, many of whom fled to Congo after taking part in the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, she said.

"The atrocities perpetrated by these armed groups are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape," she said in a statement. "Women are brutally gang raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters."

The statement continued: "Frequently women are shot or stabbed in their genital organs, after they are raped. Women, who survived months of enslavement, told me that their tormentors had forced them to eat excrement or the human flesh of murdered relatives."

Saying the situation required immediate attention from Congo’s government and the international community, Erturk reported that 4,500 cases of sexual violence had already been counted so far this year. The U.N. investigator said the actual number of incidents was probably much higher.

The Panzi hospital, a specialized institution in Bukavu near the Rwandan border, sees about 3,500 women a year suffering fistula and other severe genital injuries resulting from atrocities, Erturk said.

The mineral-rich eastern reaches of Congo, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, are the most unstable in the country, and civilians are often killed as rival militias clash.

U.N. peacekeepers helped end a wider 1998-2002 war in Congo that engulfed six neighboring countries, and the nearly 18,000-strong force currently in Congo is the U.N.’s largest peacekeeping operation.

While rebels commit most of the worst abuses, Erturk said government forces and national police are responsible for nearly 20 percent of all cases of sexual violence reported.

Army units have deliberately targeted communities suspected of supporting militia groups "and pillage, gang rape and, in some instances, murder civilians," she said.

Erturk, who also visited the country’s Equator province and Ituri district, said she was "shocked" to discover that police and armed forces respond to unrest with indiscriminate reprisals.

The tactics include "pillaging, torture and mass rape," she said, citing a December incident when 70 police officers took revenge for the torching of a police station in Karawa by burning the Equator town, torturing civilians and raping at least 40 women, including an 11-year-old girl.

No police officer has been charged or arrested in relation to the atrocities, she said, adding that similar operations have since been carried out in Bonyanga and Bongulu, also in Congo’s northwest.

"The justice system is in a deplorable state," Erturk said. "It is overwhelmed even by the limited number of cases, in which women brave all obstacles and dare to report sexual violence. Reports of corruption and political interference in the judicial process are widespread."

Erturk will report her findings in September to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan

Few Victims Likely to Participate in Sudan Trial
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
By Caroline Tosh
July 25, 2007

Only the victims of acts of violence cited in the charge sheet for Darfur will have a chance to make their views known to the International Criminal Court.

Although people who have suffered directly from the violence in Darfur, western Sudan, can apply to take part in any future trial held at the International Criminal Court, an expert on international law has warned that the actual scope of victim participation is likely to be disappointing.

In what has been hailed as a groundbreaking development in international justice, victims are accorded the right to present their views and observations to the International Criminal Court, ICC, and play a role at various stages of proceedings. Their participation is on a voluntary basis, unlike witnesses who are summoned to testify, and they are free to make submissions on issues they themselves feel are important. But in order to be accepted as victims, they must formally apply to the court.

In the case of Sudan, Mariana Goetz of REDRESS, an organisation which seeks reparation for torture victims, said, “Perhaps one of the most important things to remember is that probably participation of victims [in proceedings] will be quite disappointing.”

Goetz, ICC programme adviser with REDRESS, campaigned for the establishment of the ICC, and has worked as a legal advisor at both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

REDRESS works to ensure that the rights of victims are reflected in the procedure and practice of international justice mechanisms. In May, it published a guide to the ICC called “Accountability and Justice for International Crimes in Sudan”, which it drafted in response to questions being asked by people on the ground in Darfur.

At a July 18 seminar in London on accountability for crimes committed in Sudan, Goetz noted that the arrest warrants the ICC has issued against two suspects in respect of Sudan list 51 counts against each, and said that only the victims of those particular alleged crimes will be eligible to participate.

“While there are 51 counts which cover quite a wide range of crimes, the victims who want to participate in those cases…will have to show that they actually are victims of the same crimes in that arrest warrant,” said Goetz.

“While victims of the situation [in Darfur] will be vast, victims in actual cases will be very low.”

In April this year, ICC prosecutors released arrest warrants for former Sudanese interior minister Ahmad Harun and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb for war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to events in Darfur. The arrest warrants cover crimes alleged in connection with particular incidents across five locations.

The conflict in Darfur in western Sudan, which has seen more than two million people displaced and between 200,000 and 400,000 killed, has been raging since 2003. It is one of four situations that are now before the ICC.

The authorities in Khartoum have obstructed the work of the court, and an ongoing security threat has meant that ICC outreach and investigations have had to take place outside Sudan.

Goetz said that lack of awareness about the international court left many people in Sudan unsure of its role.

“To date, actually very little outreach has been done by the court. [Outreach efforts for Sudan] have only had a budget as of the year 2007, even though investigations began in 2005,” she said.

“[People in Sudan] can't see anyone present from the court, and haven't necessarily had all the information about the court that they would have liked.”

A report by the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association, IBA, published in May, said that “ a stronger presence and more contextual outreach activities are needed in all situation countries, particularly Sudan”.

Goetz added that there was a great deal misinformation in Sudan regarding the work of the court, stemming from the official stance of hostility towards it.

“Because of the nature of the conflict there, the ICC is really considered a tool for foreign intervention and as a result, information about the ICC in Sudan is often misconstrued [or] misinformation. The ICC is often very politicised in the media,” she said.

Abdelsalam Hassan, a London-based human rights lawyer from Sudan who also spoke at the seminar last week, thinks that many of those affected by the conflict harbour unrealistic expectations of the court.

“I think victims within Darfur might have exaggerated expectancies… on what the court can do for them,” he told IWPR.

“I think their initial understanding was that the court was coming to solve the whole problems and to prosecute all the perpetrators, and to bring things to where they should be.”

Like Goetz, Hassan is disappointed with the scale of the outreach work done in Sudan so far.

“Obviously, the court should have made more efforts to reach the victims and the victims' community, to give them the right facts about the courts,” he said. “But having said that, I must also acknowledge the difficulties faced by the court [which is] acting… with strong resistance from the government.”

Hassan added that many victims are illiterate and thus unable to read the documents produced by the ICC.

“The court made an effort to translate most of its related documents into Arabic, but in some cases, this is not enough… because Arabic is not spoken by the whole people in Darfur.”

He thinks it is important that people’s expections of the court should be managed. Many are disappointed that the court has issued arrest warrants for only two suspects thus far - a relatively low-level paramilitary commander and a former interior minister - when senior government officials are widely believed to be responsible for arming the Janjaweed militias.

“This is why there is a need to explain to people that this is not the end of the road; that these are not the only people who are going to be prosecuted,” he said.

Claudia Perdomo of the ICC’s outreach unit said the court does attempt to manage victims’ perceptions of what the court can do.

“In general, expectations are quite high due to the great suffering of the people in these areas. We try to explain that we have limited resources and that our mandate is limited,” she said.

“It is not the objective of the Registry to promote victims’ participation… The aim of the court is that properly informed victims [should] decide voluntarily to file an application to participate in the proceedings.”

Perdomo said that in an attempt to conduct outreach work effectively, ICC officials have visited four refugee camps in Chad – home to thousands of displaced Sudanese people.

They are also in contact with people from Darfur and Khartoum and with Sudanese expatriates in a bid “to reach parts of the population and gather feedback on concerns and misunderstandings about what the role of the court is”.

The court is also working hard to overcome language barriers by employing Sudanese interpreters and outreach officers who speak the Darfur languages Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa as well as Arabic, she said, adding, “We are also developing visual tools to promote an understanding of the ICC, including a complete set of illustrations and posters with no text or very little text and a video to complement the efforts.”

UN Condemns Gross Human Rights Violations in Sudan
Voice of America News
By Lisa Schlein
July 27, 2007

DATELINE: Geneva

A United Nations watchdog committee has condemned Sudan for widespread and systematic human rights violations and urged the government to prosecute war crimes. The U.N. Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has wrapped up a three-week session in which it examined the records of three countries including Sudan. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

The 18-member expert body expresses concern about a wide-range of human rights abuses in Sudan, especially in the conflict-ridden province of Darfur.
It says violations, including murder, rape, forced displacement, the recruitment of child soldiers and attacks against the civil population, have been and continue to be committed with total impunity. The group says the abuses occur throughout Sudan and particularly in Darfur.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee urges the Sudanese government to follow up on the allegations arising out of the situation in Darfur. Vice-Chairman of the Committee, Ivan Shearer, says Khartoum must prosecute these crimes without amnesty and must distance itself from militias.

"Ensure that no financial support or material is channeled to militias that engage in ethnic cleansing or the deliberate targeting of civilians," he noted. "This has been a major problem in Sudan, that more or less covert assistance has been given to certain elements that have been pursuing gross violations of human rights and so on and gross violations of international humanitarian law."

The United Nations estimates 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million have been displaced during the conflict in Darfur.

This is the first time in a decade that Sudan's human rights record has come under review by the U.N. Committee. Vice-Chairman, Ahmed Tawfik Khalil, says the 18 independent experts and Sudanese officials who presented the report had a frank and fruitful discussion.

He says the government gave the impression that it was trying to improve the human rights situation, although it agreed that a lot remained to be done.

"And, they have given us assurances that they will do their best as the representative of the Sudan to continue along this path. But, I think, having said that, no one could really turn a blind eye of what is happening there," he added.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee is also urging the government of Sudan to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, to make sure that all human rights violations are investigated, and that those responsible for such violations are prosecuted at national or international level.

The Committee told Khartoum to report back in a year on its progress in addressing its most important concerns.

UN Passes Unanimous Resolution On Darfur
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg), via AllAfrica.com
By Mithre J. Sandrasagra
July 31, 2007

New York

A resolution to create the world's largest peacekeeping operation was unanimously adopted by the U.N. Security Council Tuesday.

The decision to create the African Union-U.N. hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID) follows months of tough negotiations over the force's command structure and mandate, which required the consent of the Sudanese government and the approval of China, a veto-wielding member of the Council and close ally of Khartoum.

The resolution calls for a force of up to 19,555 soldiers, including 360 military observers and liaison officers, plus 3,772 police, alongside 19 police units of 140 people each.
This resolution sends a "clear and powerful" signal that the U.N. is committed to protect the lives of the people of the region, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the members of the Council following the balloting.

But some humanitarian groups said more urgent action was needed.

"While we are pleased that the negotiations on the hybrid have reached a conclusion, the force will not be able to make a difference on the ground for many months," Jamie Balfour-Paul, Oxfam's humanitarian policy advisor, said Tuesday. Oxfam is a British-based non-governmental organisation working to alleviate poverty and hunger.

"People in Darfur are being attacked every day and are stuck in camps which they are too frightened to leave," Balfour-Paul added, stressing that, "Aid workers trying to help them have also been attacked.

UNAMID aims to establish an "initial operational capability" for its headquarters by October, and to achieve sufficient strength to carry out its mandate by the end of 2007.

"The plan for Darfur from now on is to achieve a ceasefire, including an end to aerial bombings of civilians; drive forward peace talks [in Tanzania] and, as peace is established, offer to begin to invest in recovery and reconstruction," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said before invited guests here early Tuesday morning. Brown did not attend the Security Council consultations prior to balloting.

In order to win agreement, the adopted resolution put forth by Britain, France and Slovakia dropped earlier threats of new sanctions if the warring parties did not cooperate, and deleted the right to the "seizure and disposal" of illegal arms. UNAMID will monitor arms instead.

One of the most contentious issues during negotiations was how to determine the chain of command for the hybrid force. A number of potential troop contributors were nervous at the unusual format which was designed to win over Sudan's opposition to a pure U.N. force.

The resolution does, however, stress that there will be a "single chain of command", and that "command and control structures and backstopping" will be provided by the U.N. Day-to-day decisions, however, will be taken by an African general, and the aim is for most of the troops to be African.

Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda will be major troop contributors, but elements will come from around the world, including a team of Chinese engineers who will build the U.N. base.

Although Britain tabled the resolution, it is expected to contribute only a handful of troops. Britain will, however, provide as much as 100 million pounds in logistical and economic support.

The resolution was adopted despite retention of references to Chapter 7, under which the U.N. can authorise the use of force for self-defence to ensure the free movement of humanitarian workers and to protect civilians.

Until recently, China, the largest purchaser of Sudanese oil, had indicated that it would veto any resolutions on Darfur that included Chapter 7 provisions.

However, "In recent months pressure has mounted on the Chinese government over its relationship with Khartoum, as advocacy efforts have linked ever more forcefully Beijing's complicity in the Darfur genocide and China's hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games," wrote Eric Reeves, author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide", on his weblog last week.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives is moving to pass legislation stepping up economic pressure on Khartoum.

The Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007 would require the U.S. Department of the Treasury to publish and maintain a list of companies or entities whose business dealings directly benefit the Sudanese government. It also enables U.S. state and local governments to divest from those companies, and provides protection to fund managers from lawsuits brought by investors who disagree with any decision to divest.

"Evidence of mass slaughter, aerial bombardments, and forced displacements targeted against the African tribes in Darfur require us to take this action," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"Chinese oil interests in Darfur are at the forfront of media campaigns," James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum in New York, told IPS. "What isn't talked about are the oil interests of the U.S. and UK, and their motivations for pushing for humanitarian intervention in Sudan."

U.S. oil companies, banned from doing business with Sudan since 1997, are eager for a piece of the action in Sudan. Chevron has already conducted extensive surveys in Southern Sudan and Darfur.

"Public 'pressure' for intervention in Darfur is welcomed by Washington and used as a lever against the governments of Sudan and China," according to Paul, who stressed that, "The public is being persuaded that the only way to stop the bloodletting is armed intervention and not a political settlement that would in fact be the best route towards peace."

Brown warned Tuesday that, "if any party blocks progress and the killings continue, I and others will redouble our efforts to impose further sanctions."

If the government of Sudan is not a "good-faith partner in this initiative, the operation will fail," Ban stressed, adding, "We have the same expectation of the rebel movements."
Since it began in February 2003, when members of the region's ethnic African tribes took up arms against what they saw as decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, the Darfurian people have been subject to government-sponsored displacement, rape and murder.

The violence sponsored by the Sudanese government and perpetrated by its Janjaweed militias has claimed at least 400,000 lives, displaced 2.5 million people and left more than 3.5 million men, women and children struggling to survive amid violence and starvation, according to the U.N. and African Union.

Pointing to the importance of the peace talks commencing this weekend in Arusha, Tanzania, British officials admitted that the new force alone "can't solve the problem."
"It is only through a political process that we can achieve a sustainable solution to the conflict," Ban emphasised.

Darfur: The evidence of war crimes
The Independent (UK)
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
August 2, 2007

500 drawings by children who escaped the violence are to be submitted to the International Criminal Court as proof of war crimes by Sudanese forces
Dramatic new evidence of the attacks on the people of Darfur by Sudanese government troops has emerged in 500 drawings by children who escaped the violence by fleeing across the border to Chad.

In a ground-breaking move, the remarkable collection of images will now be submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has started proceedings against a Sudanese government minister and a militia commander accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.

The testimony of the children, some as young as eight, emerged by chance when a peace campaigner handed the children paper, pencils and crayons to keep them occupied while she interviewed their mothers.

Anna Schmidt, a researcher for Waging Peace, which campaigns against genocide, had been hoping to gain information about the atrocities in Darfur from the women, who are among 250,000 to have fled to the relative safety in neighbouring Chad.

Yet it was their children who provided perhaps the most significant indication yet of exactly what has gone on in Darfur. Most of them could not read or write. But they could draw. And, unprompted, they started to reveal what they had seen with their own eyes.

The drawings depict Sudanese tanks, planes and helicopters launching co-ordinated attacks with the Arab Janjaweed militia against Darfuris defending themselves with bows and arrows.

The government of Sudan has repeatedly denied launching military attacks in Darfur.
The graphic images include the bombing of civilians and children; homes being set on fire as villages are destroyed; beheadings; victims lying in pools of blood; women chained together being led away; and mass graves. Many of the children who drew the stories of their lives do not have fathers or brothers. Men and older boys have been slaughtered in Darfur. Childish lines that look as though they should be depicting fairgrounds or farmyards, instead show helicopter gun attacks, tanks bearing the Sudanese flag, and soldiers wearing the uniform of the Sudanese army alongside vehicles with machineguns driven by Janjaweed. The perpetrators are always light-skinned. The victims are always black.

"This is the proof," said Rebecca Tinsley, a director of Waging Peace, who will submit the drawings to the ICC and plans to exhibit them to rally support for tougher international action against Sudan. "If this is not evidence, I don't know what is. The children have provided a photographic record. They have not been manipulated. The pattern that emerged in the drawings is amazing. It corroborates what we know is happening and disproves what we are being told by the government of Sudan."
The ICC has named two suspects wanted for alleged war crimes in Darfur. They are Ahmed Muhammed Harun, formerly Sudan's junior interior minister responsible for Darfur and now humanitarian affairs minister, and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a leader of one of the Janjaweed militias. But there is no guarantee they will be handed over by Sudan.

About 110 people are dying in Darfur every day, according to Waging Peace. More than 200,000 people have been killed since the crisis began four years ago, two million have been displaced and four million rely on food aid.

On Tuesday, the United Nations backed a British and French resolution which will allow a 26,000-strong UN-African Union peacekeeping force to go to Darfur. But British officials admit this is only a first step towards a long-term peace settlement in Sudan and that the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has made concessions before, only to frustrate progress at a later stage. There are already signs that it may do so again, with one Sudanese minister reportedly saying the UN resolution may be "stillborn".

Ms Tinsley expressed concern at statements by the Sudanese government yesterday that the force would come from African nations. She said the African Union was already overstretched and 13,000 short of the number of troops it needed in Somalia. She saw the statements as "predictable delaying tactics" by Khartoum. She feared the force might not be in place until next February, even though the UN wants to start deploying it in October. Ms Tinsley is campaigning for tougher sanctions on leading figures in the Sudanese government such as a travel ban on its prominent figures.

Omer Siddig, the Sudanese ambassador in London, welcomed the UN resolution yesterday as "a step forward in the right direction". He said it was not true that Sudanese government had given implicit or explicit support to the Janjaweed in their campaign of ethnic cleansing. "We are the government and we know things on the ground," he told BBC Radio 4.
When she visited Darfur, Ms Tinsley gathered evidence of the systematic rape of black women when they left refugee camps to gather firewood. She said rape was being used as a weapon of war, with victims being told: "I want to dilute your blood." Men called their victims abid (slave). A "second wave of genocide" was happening because many women were developing HIV-Aids and could not get drugs to treat the disease. Victims were often subsequently shunned by men.

Some aid agencies are reluctant to speak out against Sudan, fearing that they might be expelled from the country. There are claims that aid workers are being intimidated. One was accused of "telling lies" about conditions in Darfur when he returned after the Sudanese government spotted an interview he gave to his local newspaper.

When Ms Tinsley interviewed women in Darfur, several told her: "You have to be our voice. We don't have a voice."

Now, the women's children have found theirs.

[back to contents]

Uganda (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda

Rebels say lack of funds delays Uganda peace talks
Reuters
By Francis Kwera
July 25, 2007

KAMPALA - A failure by Ugandan rebels to raise $2 million to fund foreign travel and reach commanders in their forest hideouts will delay the planned resumption of peace talks next week, participants said on Wednesday.

Discussions between representatives of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas and Ugandan government officials had been due to resume in Juba, southern Sudan, next Monday.

But Martin Ojul, head of the LRA delegation at the talks, said his group had been unable to raise enough money from donors to organise a visit by 500 people to meet rebel leaders.

LRA boss Joseph Kony and his top deputies are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and have yet to be seen in Juba. Instead, they are camped somewhere in Democratic Republic of Congo's lawless Garamba forest.

"We are still stuck," Ojul told Reuters by telephone from southern Sudan. "We want funds to ferry people from northern Uganda to Garamba, and to send people abroad to do research so that we can build a strong case of justice and reconciliation."

The Ugandan government has agreed to use a national process of accountability for atrocities committed during two decades of war between its military and the LRA -- implicitly rejecting ICC demands the wanted men be handed over for trial in The Hague.

The aim of the planned Garamba trip, Ojul said, was to discuss with Kony how to achieve accountability without the ICC.

LRA representatives are also hoping to visit South Africa, Sierra Leone and Argentina. "Traveling to these countries will help us learn how people there dealt with situations of conflict, justice and reconciliation," Ojul said.

Northern Uganda's war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted nearly 2 million more. LRA fighters are notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping children to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.

The head of the Ugandan government team in Juba, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, told Reuters the resumption of the talks would be delayed, but gave no other details.

"Consultations on the government side are in advanced stages," he said. "We are supposed to resume on July 30 but we cannot due to some issues. A new date will be communicated."

Can Traditional Rituals Bring Justice to Northern Uganda?
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Julius Ocen
July 25, 2007

Local justice offers an alternative to formal trials, but applying unwritten tribal codes may not be enough to bring closure to Uganda’s brutal conflict.

As peace talks on ending northern Uganda's 21 year civil war reach a critical stage, there is a growing debate inside the country and beyond about how best to achieve lasting peace and justice.

Formal peace talks are due to resume on July 31 in Juba in the south of Sudan in an effort to end the prolonged insurgency by the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, which has seen some 100,000 people killed since 1986, around 1.7 million people displaced from their homes and at least 20,000 children abducted by the rebels to become child soldiers, sex slaves and porters.

Four different processes for justice and reconciliation are on the table, and at present it is not known which one will prevail - or whether an amalgam of all of them could be the blueprint for harmony.

First, there is Uganda’s formal legal and judicial system, which could be used to try war crimes suspects.

There is also an international justice process in train – the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for four top LRA figures including the movement's leader Joseph Kony.

Then there is the Ugandan state’s Amnesty Act of 2000, which allows the rebels come out of the bush voluntarily if they renounce violence.

Finally, there are the traditional systems of justice used by northern Uganda’s ethnic groups, including the Acholi, the people to which Kony belongs and which has borne the brunt of the fighting.

The debate is a complex one, but comes down to a choice between the retributive, western system of justice of the ICC, involving punishment for crimes, and customary African practices which emphasise restorative justice and reconciliation.

PEACE TALKS STRESS LOCAL JUSTICE METHODS

Ahead of the July 31 resumption of the peace negotiations in Sudan, everyone is scrutinising a document agreed at the last session which covered "reconciliation and accountability".

The 11-page document contains a formula for a domestic judicial process that would cover crimes committed during the conflict. On the one hand, it suggests Uganda’s judicial system could be harnessed to try cases – perhaps imposing softer penalties than those normally applied to crimes of such gravity. And on the other, it also outlined possible "alternative justice mechanisms" as a way of promoting reconciliation.

Since the Ugandan government and the rebels began negotiating in August 2006, the LRA has consistently argued that Uganda’s own justice system would be a more appropriate mechanism than sending people to The Hague, and has made it a condition of a final peace deal that the ICC must drop the charges.

Although it was the Ugandan government that invited international prosecutors to look into the northern Ugandan conflict in the first place, it has recently shown signs that it would prefer a peace settlement to an ICC trial if it had to choose between the two. The wording of the June 29 accord only goes as far as committing the government to "address conscientiously the question of the ICC arrest warrants relating to the leaders of the LRA", but the unspoken implication is that if an adequate domestic legal process can be agreed, ICC prosecutions would become irrelevant and unnecessary.

The precise nature of the alternative justice methods that might be employed has not been spelled out, but the document says, "Traditional justice mechanisms, such as Culo Kwor, Mato Oput, Kayo Cuk, Ailuc and Tonu ci Koka and others as practised in the communities affected by the conflict shall be promoted, with necessary modifications, as a central part of the framework for accountability and reconciliation."

These models of justice are rituals specific to various northern ethnic groups, and predate British colonial rule and Ugandan independence. They seek to obtain justice, reconciliation, harmony and the reintegration of offenders following disputes between and within communities.

"Restorative justice sees greater value in educating and rehabilitating an offender than in simply incarcerating him and forgetting about him," said Dr Lucy Hovil of Uganda's Refugee Law Project.

The Reverend Baker Ochola, the retired Anglican bishop of Kitgum and formerly vice-chair of the Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative, is one of the leading advocates of traditional methods as opposed to the ICC process as the best way of achieving peace and justice. Offenders, he said, "ask forgiveness of their community and pay reparations - sometimes in the form of a goat or a cow - to those they have wronged. Finally, they rejoin their community without cruelty or victimisation".

In a recent interview with the New York-based human rights magazine IntheFray, Bishop Ochola, who lost his wife to an LRA landmine, said, "Real justice is not punishment. Real justice is not killing someone because someone has killed your child, because now you're becoming a killer just like him or her.”

Traditional justice, he said, offers a different route, “We are not going to kill you. We're going to give you back your life. That's the difference. Truth, mercy, justice and peace must stand together."

Bishop Ochola said he believes the ICC is only concerned with international legitimacy, not with healing a traumatised population.

TRADITIONAL JUSTICE FAR FROM STRAIGHTFORWARD

Not everyone agrees that community justice will work. Eric Stover, director of the Human Rights Centre at the University of California warns that "Kony and the leaders of the LRA ... could get away with murder”.

"The question is, do people want peace without any justice? And do they understand what exactly the ICC is? Do they understand that it's not the rank-and-file [LRA guerrillas] who will be prosecuted, but the top LRA leaders?" he said.

The most widely publicised of the local conflict-resolution ceremonies is Mato Oput, performed by the Acholi people. Its name translates roughly as "drinking a bitter potion made from the leaves of the oput tree". At the end of lengthy ceremonies conducted by clan elders, victim and persecutor drink the brew to demonstrate that they admit the past was bitter and pledge not to taste such bitterness again.

Support for Mato Oput as a solution is widespread among the Acholi, who long for peace after more than two decades of warfare.

But apart from the question of whether LRA commanders would effectively be granted with impunity for serious crimes simply by submitting to healing ceremonies, there are other issues that will make it far from easy to institutionalise this kind of local practice.

First, it is debatable whether an unwritten set of laws will work for a conflict so major and so violent as the one in northern Uganda.

Kathambi Kinoti, a Nairobi-based lawyer who works for the international Association for Women's Rights in Development, sees potential pitfalls in applying traditional models of justice to a modern conflict.

"Traditional African laws are for the most part unwritten," she said. "That means it is not always clear what the laws are, as their interpretation can be ad hoc and modified to suit the occasion."

According to a substantial investigative report from September 2005 entitled "Restoring Relationships in Acholi Land", funded by the Dutch government and the MacArthur Foundation, said that most of the elders interviewed felt that “some of the current war crimes are unprecedented within Acholi-land, and pose a significant challenge to traditional justice based on restorative principles”.

The report continued, "For instance, LRA massacres, mass rape, abduction, arson and mutilation are not crimes Acholi elders are familiar with in the history of the region. Although variants of such crimes have existed in Acholi history (raids by northern Nubians and Arab slave traders), the modern scale and devastation on the population have not been witnessed before."

Another complicating factor is that Mato Oput is not the tradition of other northern groups affected by the, notably the Langi, Madi and Iteso, which have their own distinct reconciliation and justice ceremonies. The Langi have Kayo Cuk, which involves slaughtering a bull, the Iteso also kill a bull and smear its blood on the contending parties, while the Madi have the Tolu rite which includes cleansing ceremonies akin to those of Judaism. The Madi used to kill a human being rather than a bull in their "bending of the spear" ceremonies, although the practice has long been abandoned.

It is far from clear whether these ethnic groups would be willing to accept the Acholis' Mato Oput as some kind of universal "traditional" rite, or whether the different systems could be harmonised.

Colonel Walter Ocora, the district commissioner of Gulu, the main Acholi area, has suggested that the national parliament in Kampala in the south of Uganda, might need to pass some law blending the different ethnic reconciliation ceremonies into one.

Furthermore, time and circumstance have dictated that the spirit of communalism that characterised traditional life in the past, and which for example for the bedrock of Mato Oput, has been replaced with a more individualistic approach.

As one Acholi proverb puts it, “Oyo man ki wino doge” – “Each rat with its own whiskers.”

WOMEN MUST BE BROUGHT INTO TRADITIONAL RITES

Another problem with Mato Oput is that its ceremonies assign a minimal role to women, who have arguably been worse affected by the conflict than men.

As Kinoti pointed out, peace processes have limited hope of winning popular support if they "leave out half the population".

She explained, "As they [women] are rarely involved in decision-making within the traditional justice structures, there is the danger that they would be excluded from making a meaningful contribution towards justice and reconciliation.

"International human rights and criminal justice standards have provided substantial gains for women's rights, such as bringing rape during war within the ambit of war crimes and crimes against humanity. To be just, application of traditional mechanisms would have to incorporate modern international human rights standards."

CAN TRADITIONAL JUSTICE ADDRESS CRIMES OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE?

Rape and the exploitation of abducted women and girls as sex slaves were common features of the conflict, and dealing with such crimes within a traditional framework could be difficult given the taboos surrounding women.

In the case of Madi women, participants in seminars have said that although rape happens in their society, women have been "socialised" not to make allegations of rape against Madi men.

In its findings, the "Restoring Relationships in Acholi Land" report said a few community elders had argued that the modern expansion of women's rights "threatened and prevented them from carrying out their 'traditional roles’”, which included disciplining women through beatings.

The report said that while such views were not held by the majority of community leaders, “it does raise the concern that not all cultural norms or practices should be revived”.

It noted that as Acholi women are “valued almost exclusively because of their fertility, the fact that women who were raped in the bush are accused of being barren has a significant impact; this strips them of their womanhood and social status of being wives or mothers.

"Barren women are considered ‘dead’ in Acholi culture, and alienat[ed] from social life as such. There is no equivalent cleansing or accompanying shame for men who committed the crime.”

Museveni Wants LRA Warrants - For Now
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Samuel Okiror Egadu
July 25, 2007

He says his government may urge ICC to drop LRA indictments if rebels conclude peace deal.

Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni has said his government will not ask The Hague-based International Criminal Court, ICC, to lift the arrest warrants against the LRA leader Joseph Kony and his top commanders before a final peace deal is completed.

“We are not going to ask ICC to lift the arrest warrants," said Museveni while briefing journalists at State House in Kampala last week. "You must leave the warrants alone. If they [the LRA] don’t conclude the peace talks, they could be arrested and taken to the ICC or get killed. There is no shortcut.

“If they conclude the peace deal, that is when the government can write to the ICC to say we have found an alternative solution. They [the rebels] must sign the comprehensive peace agreement in Juba before any action is taken.”

Museveni referred the civil war in the north, which is now 21-years-old, to the ICC in December 2003. The ICC's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo issued arrest warrants in July 2005 for the top five men in the LRA - its leader Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen. Lukwiya died in combat last year.

The LRA leaders have been indicted on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, the killing of civilians and forcibly using children as guerrilla fighters.

The LRA rebellion has driven more than 1.7 million people into internal refugee camps in northern Uganda. Some 100,000 people have died and as many as 38,000 children have been abducted and forced to join the insurgents.

Museveni infuriated ICC officials in July last year with a policy flip-flop when, without consulting the ICC, he offered a blanket amnesty to Joseph Kony and his top aides and opened peace negotiations with LRA representatives in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

At the end of June this year, representatives of the Ugandan government and the LRA put ink on a crucial draft protocol that allows suspected war criminals to be tried under traditional tribal justice systems. The protocol on "Accountability and Reconciliation", the third of five items on the peace negotiators' agenda, allows LRA suspects to be tried under tribal procedures while suspects from the government army would be tried under the formal justice system.

Both sides in the negotiations have taken leave until the end of July to consult their constituents on the implementation mechanisms of their agreement, which seemed to sideline the ICC indictments.

Museveni called the briefing with Ugandan journalists on July 20, in an apparent attempt to pour cold water on recent reports that Kampala will call for the ICC warrants for Kony and his lieutenants to be rescinded.

Uganda's head of state said the ICC must be supported because it was created to end impunity for serious crimes. “One of the international bodies I support is this ICC," he told IWPR's correspondent and other journalists. "It is good because for people to do terrible things and get away with it because the world is not coordinated, it’s really bad. This court coordinates the world. We should all give it support.”

Museveni said international involvement in Uganda's devastating northern conflict through the ICC offers a soft-landing for the rebels, "because even if Kony was to go to the ICC, he would not be hanged. He would be sentenced to a life imprisonment. It is much better for him”.

However, Vincent Otti, the LRA's second-in-command, told IWPR in a satellite phone interview that even if a final peace deal is reached in Juba the LRA's fighters will remain in the bush unless the ICC indictments and warrants of arrest are scrapped.

Speaking from the rebels' main base in the Garamba National Park, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Otti said, “The ICC remains a big stumbling block to peace in Uganda. If ICC indictments are not lifted, we shall not come out. It’s simple. No.”

In a previous recent interview with IWPR from the Garamba, Otti said he was ready to hand himself over to the ICC in The Hague - but only if the court charges the Ugandan army on similar counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"If the UPDF [Ugandan People's Defence Force] are included on the list of indicted commanders, I will definitely go to The Hague. Short of that, I will never go,” he said.

Otti described as "very one-sided" the ICC's decision to indict only members of the LRA. “It’s not only the LRA alone who committed atrocities in northern Uganda," he said. "It’s both the LRA and the UPDF. Why did ICC indict us alone?”

Museveni, in his press briefing, warned that even if the ICC was to withdraw its arrest warrants, the government could still hunt down the rebels using national laws.

“Those fellows are still on treason charges," he said. "Even if the ICC was to lift [the arrest warrants], we shall hunt them down and our punishment is much harsher than that of the ICC. You know ICC doesn’t sentence you to death. But here, you know how things move.”

As of December last year, there were 566 prisoners on death row in Uganda. Execution is by hanging or firing squad. The penal code provides for 15 capital offences: nine are grouped under the collective heading “treason” and offences against the state. Death is a mandatory punishment for six of the treason offences.

Moreno-Ocampo has consistently said the ICC's arrest warrants would not be lifted unless there is a legal challenge from the Ugandan government or the LRA to the ICC's judges or the United Nations Security Council.

Uganda rebels want $2m for talks
BBC News
July 30, 2007

Uganda's rebels are demanding $2m from donors, or they say they will not return to peace talks in South Sudan.

Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) technical adviser David Nyekorach told the BBC the money was needed for consultations with its various groups.

Talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA rebels were expected to resume this week.
Some 2m people have fled their homes and thousands of children have been abducted during the 20-year conflict
In January, the LRA refused to resume talks after Sudan's president accused them of committing atrocities in South Sudan and threatened to evict them.
They however returned following a meeting between UN peace envoy Joachim Chissano and LRA leader Joseph Kony.

Promises

Mr. Nyekorach said their technical team has been unable to travel to the affected areas to solicit the views of its people due to lack of funding.

"The talks are on course but we cannot return to the table without suggestions from the people, so this money is important," Mr. Nyekorach told the BBC.
He said donors had failed to pay the money they had promised.
Uganda's government has also indicated that it is not ready to resume talks aimed at achieving peace in the north of the country.

Mr. Nyekorach said they hope that the funding would be released to enable the peace talks to resume at the end of August.

LRA leader Joseph Kony and three of his top commanders are wanted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court and have indicated that no deal will be signed while the warrants for their arrest are still in place.

But last month, the two sides agreed to use Ugandan justice to address human rights abuses.

Outrch Teams Urged to Prioritise Children
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Bill Oketch
August 1, 2007

ICC called on to promote education of war affected children of northern Uganda.

Northern Ugandan youngsters have urged the International Criminal Court, ICC, to do a better job of educating them about how the court's work will affect children who suffered harm during the 21-year civil war between Ugandan government forces and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, LRA.

They made this request when ICC officials and internal refugees - so-called internally displaced people, or IDPs - met recently in Otuboi IDP camp, near Soroti, in northeastern Uganda.

The open-air gathering was attended by 200 schoolchildren, dressed in purple dresses and shirts, and 800 adults. The adults included 70 IDP camp leaders from Otuboi and nine other camps.

The children recollected the suffering they had experienced at the hands of the LRA in a drama presentation. The LRA entered the region in which Otuboi is located in 2003, killing villagers, looting and burning houses and abducting children to serve as fighters and sex slaves.

Some fifty per cent of the population was forced to live in IDP camps for security. Living conditions in the camps, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, are deplorable, with a lack of adequate basic needs such as shelter, medical care, and food and non-food necessities.

In the aftermath of the LRA offensive, secondary and primary education collapsed totally before being slowly resurrected by government and international organisations.

The ICC team, comprising officials from the court's administrative division in The Hague and led by Charles Martin Juuko, the ICC's Field Outreach Coordinator for Uganda, was accused of failing to investigate sufficiently the role in atrocities of the Ugandan armed forces and government, whose president, Yoweri Museveni, referred the situation in northern Uganda to the ICC in December 2003.

The representatives of the world's first permanent war crimes court were also told by schoolchildren at the Otuboi meeting that they should be educating them, as well as adults, about the court's functions.

The ICC delegation has been visiting other areas of northern Uganda, holding seminars on the court's mandate as laid down in international law; the state of its investigations in northern Uganda; the complexity of the court's successive judicial phases; and the unique way that victims can participate in its proceedings.

Paul Ebiru, vice-chairman of the nearby Amuria district council, said the ICC presentation had been “an eye-opener” to him. But he warned that the ICC arguments would be unconvincing if court officials did not look at issue of educating children affected by the war.

The ICC delegates were also urged to investigate alleged atrocities committed by the Ugandan army and its militia allies. This is a tricky issue for the ICC. For example, victims of a raid on the nearby Barlonyo camp said the 7,000-strong Amuka Defence Unit, an auxiliary militia trained by the army to fight alongside regular troops, admitted it had killed some one hundred camp occupants in 2003 as they fled from an LRA attack in 2003. Another 400 people were killed by the LRA as its guerrillas burned camp buildings.

Following President Museveni's referral to the ICC of the civil war in the north, the ICC's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo issued arrest warrants in July 2005 for the LRA's top five men - its leader Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen. Lukwiya died in combat last year.

The LRA leaders have been indicted on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, the killing of civilians and forcibly using children as guerrilla fighters.

The LRA rebellion has driven more than 1.7 million people into internal refugee camps throughout northern Uganda. Some 100,000 people have died and as many as 38,000 children have been abducted and forced to join the insurgents.

Museveni infuriated ICC officials in July last year with a policy flip-flop when, without consulting the ICC, he offered a blanket amnesty for Joseph Kony and his top aides and opened peace negotiations with LRA representatives in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

IDPs Head Home
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Patrick Okino
August 1, 2007

As a fragile peace returns to northern Uganda, hundreds of thousands of refugees begin the trek to their abandoned homes.

With peace in sight on the distant horizon, tens of thousands of people in war-torn northern Uganda have begun the trek from internal refugee camps towards homes that some of them left two decades ago.

Some 1.7 million people were displaced during the 21-year civil war between the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, and the Ugandan armed forces.

But Roberta Russo, spokeswoman in Uganda for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, told IWPR she estimated that nearly 30 per cent of the people who had been living in camps for so-called internally displaced persons had returned to their homes since the LRA and the government signed a ceasefire in September last year.

The ceasefire came two months after peace negotiations began in Juba, the capital of autonomous South Sudan, in July 2006.

Russo said, however, that at least half of the internal refugees were still living in filthy and desolate camps that have become their sanctuaries. Their home villages had been vulnerable to raids by the LRA whose guerrilla forces abducted some 38,000 of their children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

More than 400,000 people have already returned to their homes, about 370,000 are in transit while some 900,000 re