Hypocrisy and Human Rights by Kate Cronin-Furman

Author:Kate Cronin-Furman
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cornell University Press

This rapid legal response involves the coordination of evidence gathering, witness preparation, trial logistics, and publicity, all done with heavy involvement from international actors. The only piece of the process over which the Congolese judicial system retains exclusive authority is decision and sentencing.

The involved organizations have been present in the DRC for many years. For instance, one of the organizations I met with in 2014, Avocats sans Frontières (ASF) has been working on justice issues in eastern DRC since 2002. The American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, another major sponsor of the mobile courts program, has been providing legal aid in the region since 2008. The United Nations is also heavily involved, both through the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to the mobile courts and through the monitoring and capacity-building work of the Joint Human Rights Office, a cooperative endeavor between the MONUSCO peacekeeping mission and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights established in 2008.14 These offices are heavily funded and staffed, providing jobs for hundreds of people (both locals and internationals).

Since 2009, with the assistance of these and other international actors, the Congolese military courts have convicted more than 250 individuals for international crimes.15 The majority of those who have been brought to trial have been low-ranking soldiers in the national army. This is partly due to the fact that responsibility for sexual violence crimes may be harder to assign when perpetrated by non–state actor armed groups who don’t wear uniforms and lack a clear chain of command. But it’s also the result of reluctance on the part of prosecutors to charge non–state actors “for fear that it will escalate tensions and lead to more violence.”16

Prosecutions of high-level military commanders have also been avoided due to the obvious political risk, as well as an additional procedural complication: Members of the FARDC may only be judged by their peers or superiors. Consequently, “some of the highest-ranking officers may benefit from de facto immunity from prosecution because of the lack of military magistrates of equal or superior ranks.”17

The prosecutions of low-ranking army members that have been carried out have suffered from serious procedural shortcomings. The high-profile Minova case, which tried thirty-nine members of FARDC for mass rape, is illustrative of some of these issues. In November 2012, FARDC suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the M23 rebel group. Driven out of the provincial capital of Goma, they descended on the town of Minova. Over the course of two weeks, soldiers raped more than 130 women and girls, including children as young as six. When these crimes came to light, international actors exerted significant pressure to have the perpetrators brought to justice, in part because some of the troops implicated had been trained by the United States. An investigation began in December 2012.

When the Minova trial opened on November 20, 2013, it was heralded as a watershed moment in the fight against impunity for sexual violence. But the decision handed down on May 5, 2014, was deeply disappointing to victims and their advocates.

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