A draft of a forthcoming UN Panel of Experts report has accused the Rwandan army and its allied rebel groups in the DRC (including the AFDL) of committing genocide against Great Lakes-region Hutus between 1993 and 2003. The findings are seminal for confirming the long-debated existence of a genocide against ethnic Hutus occurring at the same time as the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutus perpetrated mass killings and abuse of Tutsis.

About 20 human right officers have documented, through hundreds of pages, what they call widespread and systematic attacks by the Rwandan army and the Congolese AFDL rebel movement.

Those targeted were Rwandan Hutus who had fled into Congo after the genocide against ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda.

But the report says that attacks against Hutus who were not refugees seem to confirm that all Hutus were targeted.

In some regions, it says, checkpoints were used to identify people of Hutu origin and eliminate them – estimating that tens of thousands had been killed.

The report is expected to severely tarnish the international image of Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebellion against the genocidal and predominantly Hutu government of Rwanda in 1994, which ended the Rwandan genocide. However, recent election results in Rwanda that saw Kagame win 93% of the vote with allegations of significant political oppression of opposition groups would suggest this is an image that needs tarnishing if the international community is serious about ending conflict and mass human rights abuses in Central Africa.

The big question is – will Kagame be indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity??

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You could be excused for thinking that this was all over with or had nothing to do with you, considering the little attention it gets in the news. But in case you were wondering how you are directly responsible for the deaths of more than six million people in the Congo, here’s something to consider:

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Four years into its mandate, the International Criminal Court has yet to secure a conviction for those accused of committing horrific war crimes since 2002. Yet again, the court has decided to drop charges against an accused war criminal due to lack of evidence. The latest war criminal to escape justice is Abu Garda of Darfur, who was accused of killing 12 African Union peacekeepers in 2007, and voluntarily turned himself in to authorities last year. However, ICC judges have ruled that there is not enough evidence against Abu Garda to support a trial.

According to the press release, the pre-trial Chamber:

“was not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that Bahar Idriss Abu Garda could be held criminally responsible either as a direct or as an indirect co-perpetrator for the commission of the crimes”

This is on the heels of the dropped charges against the Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the first case to go to trial at the ICC, for the same reason – lack of evidence. I had such high hopes for this institution, created as a permanent international court with the power to punish the most serious violations of human rights. The purpose of the court was to take away the ‘ad hoc’ nature of prosecutions of war crimes, which until the establishment of the ICC relied upon the political will of the international community to agree to the establishment of an international criminal tribunal, like the ones for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.

The situation of Darfur was unique for the ICC as it was the first situation to be referred by the Security Council of the United Nations. Other cases have been referred to the Special Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, by the countries themselves affected. So given the lack of cooperation by the government in Sudan, I can understand the limitations with gathering evidence. However, this is a problem that appears to be plaguing the court.

Understandably, witnesses and evidence is a difficult thing to collect in a guerilla conflict. But is it the case that Mr. Ocampo is just not trying hard enough to gather the necessary evidence to secure a conviction? Or is it that Western legal standards are just unsuitable to trialling international war crimes? We clearly will never get a Law and Order: War Crimes and Atrocities Unit, in which teams of highly specialized forensic technologists scour desert and jungle floors for evidence that this particular armed rebel commited this particular atrocity. I would like to be able to say it should be enough that there is overwhelming evidence proving that you are a person of a particular rank within a particular armed group and that that armed group has been witnessed committing war crimes to convict that person of war crimes. Perhaps there is too much individual agency attributed to violators of international law. But clearly this would be problematic.

I don’t know what solution to offer the ICC and I’m sure their much more qualified legal experts are working hard to address their lack of success. I do hope for a win for the ICC sometime soon, as the institution is quickly losing credibility in the eyes of the international community.

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I know it’s really en vogue to criticize the UN as a useless institution, but news today of the new special envoy appointed by Ban Ki-Moon to address sexual violence in conflict is a tremendous step in the right direction for international politics. In his words:

“I have informed the UNSC of my intention to appoint Margot Wallstrom, vice-president of the European Commission, as my special representative to intensify efforts to end sexual violence against women and children in conflict situations,” he said.

“We will continue efforts to end the conflicts in the east (of the Democratic Republic of Congo), restore state authority, facilitate the return of refugees, and protect civilians against all forms of violence including sexual violence,” Ban said.

“I’m horrified and outraged by the use of rape as a weapon of war,” he said.

I know very little about Margot Wallstrom, but in response to her appointment, she specifically addressed what she saw as the problem of people often explaining sexual violence in conflict as a “cultural” phenomenon:

“I say this is not cultural, it is criminal. It is a crime under international law and it is also a war crime,” she told Swedish public radio.

Rape has been a constant feature of war throughout history, used as a tool of communication between groups of men either for the purposes of asserting masculine dominance, of humiliating one’s opponent, or as a reward for good soldiering. Though quantitative data is not available, there seems to be a growing trend in contemporary conflicts to use extreme sexual violence as one of the primary tactics of warfare, and not simply as a by-product of conflict. Hundreds of thousands of women and young girls have been violently and brutally raped in eastern DRC, with most attacks averaging more than 4 perpetrators per victim. Women are being deliberately targeted and destructively abused in what can only be described as sexual genocide.

Though he doesn’t link the processes explicitly in his speech, Ban Ki-Moon speaks also of the economic and criminal activities dominating politics in the same regions witnessing most of the contemporary cases of extreme war rape:

The resurgence of unconstitutional changes of government in Africa is a matter of serious concern. These actions run counter to fundamental UN values, international law, and the AU’s own Constitutional Act. We must also guard against the manipulation of established processes to retain power.

Drug trafficking is also a rising threat to international peace and security in Africa. Criminal networks are very skilled at taking advantage of institutional weaknesses on the ground.

As we address all of these challenges, we must show our determination in the fight against impunity not only in Africa but around the world.

Well, allow me to make it explicit. Though I can’t speak authoritatively for every country, I can say from my research on the DRC and what I’ve read about Sudan that the sexual violence is being perpetrated as a systematic campaign to maintain the chaos necessary to control valuable resources, with the complicity of Western corporations, whose economic concerns clearly outweigh any moral compass they may purport to carry. I can’t help but wonder what obstacles Ban Ki-Moon will face in attempting to implement any recommendations to be found with this new envoy, since the West has already shown reluctance to do anything to address the influence of their corporations on encouraging and exacerbating conflicts in Africa.

I want to stay positive. Maybe with enough attention shone on the international political economy of war rape, something will actually be done to address the crime.

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I thought the news today that President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has stated that he would not oppose the secession of southern Sudan if the region held a referendum. At a ceremony marking the five year anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between north and south Sudan, Bashir affected a conciliatory tone, stating his National Congress Party did not want to see the south secede, but promised that if the referendum to be held next year eventuates in a “yes” vote, the north would act as “good neighbours” to the south.

The referendum is scheduled for 2011, at which time souther Sudanese will take to the polls to decide the future of the region. Al-Dardiri Mohamed Ahmed, a leading figure at the NCP, was quoted by local press as saying that the separation of the south from the north became the “reality and inevitable”:

“We should be realistic and talk about what is current and what should be. We in the NCP were keener than anyone else on unity, but the SPLM blocked that option for us, and we missed the opportunity” he said.

However, an ex-SPLM (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement) member, Lam Akol, believes secession would be “suicidal” for southern Sudan, turning the region into another Somalia, which has suffered from general lawlessness and political instability for the past decade.

“At the moment, with the state of hostility in the South, with the state of tribal conflicts, intra-tribal conflicts, any call for secession at this moment will be a call for the ‘Somalisation’ of southern Sudan,” said Akol, who heads the breakaway SPL-Democratic Change

Apparently the SPLM had banned Akol’s group from political activities in souther Sudan, accusing the SPL-Democratic Change of being not a political party, but an armed guerilla group exacerbating the violence in the region.

The international community awaits the national elections later this year and the January 2011 referendum with caution. According to a joint Oxfam-IRC-and-eight-others report released January 9, “Two landmark events — April 2010 national elections and a January 2011 referendum where Southerners will vote on whether to remain part of a united Sudan or secede — could well result in further instability if all actors are not well-prepared.”

Understandably, both southern leaders and members of the international community are less than trusting that Bashir will provide the “free, fair, and transparent” national elections or referendum he’s promising. Southern politicians have accused Bashir of wanting to fix the referendum to ensure a “no” vote – to try to keep the south’s oil wealth to themselves. The national elections coming this April will be the first multi-party elections in 24 years. And as an indicted war criminal who has thus far evaded arrest over charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his complicity in the Darfuri genocide, Bashir perhaps has different standards for “transparency and credibility” than what may be expected from his opposition or international observers.

Because the situation involves such volatile elements that could quickly and easily destabilize, many are urging the southern Sudanese to reconsider secession. Egypt has voiced its opposition to secesson, with Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit stating:

“We in Egypt believe that the separation [of South Sudan] will incur dangers on the people of the South and its relations with the North. There may be fighting or civil war and maybe both sides will not be happy with the outcome.”

As well, many southern Sudanese living in or near the north have expressed concerns over retaliatory attacks if the secession referendum is successful.

While many of the millions of southerners who fled the war to the north say they want to go back if the referendum results in secession as many expect, there are some born and educated in the north who say they should have the right to stay.

“North Sudan cannot ignore me,” said Keji Roman, a southerner born and bred in the capital. “Khartoum is my city — I don’t think Khartoum can close its door in my face.”

But she said if there was a return to war as many fear, southerners would not be able to stay in the north.

“Khartoum would be a dangerous place for me to stay because this war will be vicious,” she said.

And while political analysts all largely anticipate a “yes” vote in the referendum, no definitions of the citizenship of the new states have been set; it has not been negotiated where exactly the border would fall or what would be the fate of those living in the border region. As well, southern Sudan is among the poorest regions in the world, with very little infrastructure or development. Many analysts are concerned as to the effect of an influx of millions of exiled southern Sudanese back into the region. With so much uncertainty, it is feared chaos and violence could ensue as a result of the referendum.

But perhaps our concern is moot, when it seems highly unlikely that Omar al-Bashir would allow a fair and transparent referendum of the oil-rich region.

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Remember a year or so ago when that KBR employee told the media about her experience being gang-raped by her fellow co-workers in Iraq and how the company wouldn’t let her take any legal action? They were apparently successful in silencing her through a clause in her employment contract that forced her to forego criminal justice for sexual violence and assault, but rather take part in arbitration and mediation through the company. Well, this case has apparently prompted Senator Al Franken to table an amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill that would prevent the US government from doing business with contractors that force their employees to sign away their rights to seek legal action against sexual assault.

Jon Stewart asks, “how is this a loophole that needs closing?”

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Most likely in response to the big news of two weeks ago, the supposed foiling of a plotted terror attack on an Australian army base, the Australian government has just proposed new, even more restrictive anti-terror laws.

The proposed amendments will give even more discretionary power to the police (who are already allowed to wiretap without warrant, who are are empowered with expedited search warrants without evidence and without you even knowing it). Under the proposed legislation, police across Australia would be allowed to search a premises without a warrant.

Perhaps more terrifyingly, the proposed legislation intends to broaden the definition of terrorism to include not just planned physical attacks, but also plans for inflicting psychological harm.

Attorney General Robert McClelland believes:

“As the events of recent weeks demonstrate, terrorism continues to pose a real and significant threat to Australia and Australian interests both here and abroad,” McClelland said. The government is “committed to ensuring the focus of Australia’s national security and counterterrorism laws remains on preventing a terrorist attack from occurring.”

The problem, of course, boils down to that simple fact of Australians having no guarantee of civil liberties. Not to mention that the amendments are completely unnecessary. As Richard Ackland argues:

The Government is selling this as a balance between the rights of citizens and the security of the nation but, overall, there is much more cranking up than watering down. None of which guarantees that, if you have wider definitions and more powers, detection and prevention become more effective.

The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, as good as admitted it on Wednesday. He was not aware of any case where anyone has ”slipped the net” because the law enforcement agencies didn’t have expanded search powers.

The proposed legislative changes do not address what is known here as the ‘secret evidence regime,’ whereby a person can be convicted of a charge on the basis of evidence s/he will never be allowed to know. This same regime has already been found as an illegal violation of rights in the UK.

All in the name of the ‘national security’ for a country that has never been victim of a terrorist attack ( no need to comment about the air raids of Darwin in 1942 & ’43 as they arguably constitute acts of war and not acts of terrorism).

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Last week, a Canadian court, operating under the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes of certain magnitude, found D�sir� Munyaneza guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide for his participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Canada is a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a document that applies the principle of “universal jursidiction” that allows countries to prosecute crimes against humanity that occur outside of their national jurisdiction. The prosecution was made possible by a relatively new law in Canada, the 2000 Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, that allows residents of Canada to be tried for crimes committed overseas. This landmark ruling makes Canada one of the few countries in the world to have successfully tried crimes aganist humanity.

�Canada is one of the biggest champions of international tribunals, but up to now had done nothing to deal with international criminals on its own territory. This will redress that to some extent,� said Ren� Provost, head of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.

While the verdict will help to mitigate Canada’s reputation as a haven for war criminals, experts say lack of political will and meagre resources will prevent many more prosecutions.

Only about $3-million of Canada’s $15-million annual war-crimes budget goes to criminal investigations and prosecutions, they say. Most of the money goes toward deportations and preventing suspects from getting to Canada.

Mr. Munyaneza is considered a low-level genocidaire. At the time of the genocide, he was 27 and ran a store owned by his father in the town of Butar�:

“The store ordered 2,304 machetes from a wholesaler months before the massacre. The court heard that Mr. Munyaneza helped pass them out as the killings began.”

In the verdict, Munyaneza was found guilty on all seven counts brought against him related to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in and around Butare, Rwanda. Judge Andr� Denis stated that he had no reservations about handing down the verdict:

“The accused’s criminal intent was demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, as was his culpable violence,” Denis wrote.

“D�sir� Munyaneza specifically intended to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group in Butare and in the surrounding communes. To that end, he intentionally killed Tutsi, seriously wounded others, caused them serious physical and mental harm, sexually assaulted many Tutsi women and generally treated Tutsi inhumanely and degradingly.”

The defense has argued that the evidence presented in the case did not justify the conviction and stated that they will be appealing the decision.

I think it is rather evident that the judge on this case would like to receive the acclaim of being the first in Canada and one of the few in the world to preside over a successful war crimes trial. Therefore, do I think it likely that he was less than objective in hearing testimonies from witnesses of both sides? Yes.

However, considering the length of time the RCMP took investigating the claims by a Rwandan group called African Rights, which initially raised the accusations against Munyaneza, before arresting and charging him, I imagine there is sufficient evidence of Munyaneza’s involvement in the genocide.

So I don’t know what to conclude – justice served? Likely. But was the process as objective and unbiased as the law is meant to be? Probably not.

Canada still harbours at least five other suspected genocidaires from the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda has asked for the extradition of five men believed to be living in Canada who played key roles in the 1994 genocide.

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The International Criminal Court is currently urgently considering whether Palestine constitutes “enough of a state” for it to bring charges of war crimes against Israel for the recent attacks on Gaza.

The court�s head of jurisdictions is examining every international agreement signed by the Palestinian Authority to decide whether it behaves � and is regarded by others � as a state, which would open the way for it to become a signatory to the court.

Exciting as the possibility of war crimes trials against top Israeli military commanders is, this development could be a long way off, as the news is really about whether or not to let Palestine become a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, the potential for a case against Israelis is slim as Israel itself is not a State Party. Under the current arrangements of the Rome Statute, the ICC prosecutor can only open investigations and issue warrants against states party to the treaty.

But should the ICC allow the Palestine Authority to ratify the treaty, the question would then be whether the court could consider charges on the basis of dual nationality.

This news comes amid rising criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

A confidential inquiry by the International Committee of the Red Cross into the actions of Israel and Hamas during the conflict is expected to accuse Israel of using �excessive force� � prohibited by the fourth Geneva convention.

The Red Cross has been collecting information for two inquiries, one into the conduct of Israel and a second into Hamas.

In the case of Israel, the Red Cross is expected to highlight three areas: the Israeli Defence Forces� �choice of weapons in a complex and densely populated environment�; the issue of proportionality, and concerns over the IDF�s lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants.

Hamas is likely to be challenged over its use of civilian facilities as cover for its fighters, its summary executions and kneecappings of Palestinians during the campaign and its indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas.

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So for those of the general public who are not actively following the every move of the FLDR and the CNDP (not to mention the national armed forces) in Eastern DR Congo, perhaps the lack of news lately has made you forget at the rampant rape crisis occurring in the country. Well, if that is the case, the Globe and Mail is here to remind us! Unfortunately, they have misrepresented the endemic sexual violence against women, claiming we are just now seeing a resurgence in rape in the eastern provinces of DRC:

The epidemic of rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, without doubt the most horrific and persistent abuse of women anywhere in the world, has flared in a vicious new outbreak in recent weeks with renewed fighting in the country’s troubled eastern region.

Though the war in DRC had officially ended in 2003 with the signing of a peace accord between the government and rebel groups operating primarily in the eastern regions of the country, violence, particularly sexual violence against women, has remained relatively constant in the region, arguably to maintain the instability necessary to allow rebel groups to exploit the Congo’s vast mineral riches. However, in August, all-out conflict flared up in the face of accusations from the DRC government that Rwanda has been sending troops to support rebel group CNDP under Laurent Nkunda.

The sexual violence is profane:

Places such as this town, which is near the edge of a vast national park, are all but under the control of a Rwandan rebel group made up mostly of remnants of the interahamwe, the Hutu militia that committed Rwanda’s genocide in 1994 then fled into Congo. They routinely descend on Kaniola to pillage goods and abduct women whom they force-march up to their forest base camp and sexually enslave, submitting them to brutal, daily rape, sometimes branding their buttocks for amusement.

�On a Friday in September, 2007, I heard a knocking on the door in the night and a voice told us to open and when we did, they caught me,� said Esperance, who was a 19-year-old student at teacher’s college when she was abducted. She did not give her surname. �One tied me to him with a length of cloth so I could not run. They took all our cows, and they took me.� She was held by the militia for eight months, until she was heavily pregnant and they were paying her less attention and she found a chance to slip away and run for home.

Esperance, who hunches over her knees and rocks back and forth when she’s not speaking, remembers one other detail about the night she was taken: the interahamwe were accompanied by soldiers she recognized, members of a Congolese army brigade stationed nearby. After the combined forces looted her whole village, they moved up the road and divided the spoils, before the soldiers went back to their posts and the rebels dragged her up into the forest.

That was not an aberration: Congolese soldiers are frequently implicated in rapes, and the Congolese government, both feeble and uninterested, has done nothing to address the problem.

Indeed, the national judicial system has been ridiculously unwilling/unable to prosecute crimes of sexual violence perpetrated against women in the Congo, and NGO reports tell of what very, very few men have been prosecuted for these crimes, most of them end up walking free, either through integration into the national armed forces or because prison guards simply let them walk out of the jail.

�The issue is not taken seriously by those in power � the state doesn’t get involved,� said V�nantie Bisimua, who founded the Network of Women for the Defence of Rights and Peace in eastern Congo. �The rape here has never been discussed in parliament or by cabinet. Our penal code still doesn’t include being raped with a gun or an object, or being shot in the vagina. We have a weak administration in a dysfunctional situation and they think it’s a women’s problem; they have other priorities.�

Unfortunately, the existence of the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission has done nothing to slow the rate of rape in the region, with MONUC itself being implicated in the sexual violence. NGOs report of MONUC peacekeepers trading food and aid supplies for sex and keeping sexual slaves.

But maybe there is one woman who can stop the violence… Eve Ensler, famous playwright who is best known for the Vagina Monologues. Apparently she’s become an advocate for women of the Congo over recent years. She has also, in partnership with Unicef:

organized truth-telling sessions in 90 villages, where women stand up to tell what happened to them, forcing men, particularly officials, to acknowledge the rapes. They have staged street demonstrations, and are working on a list of demands for women’s safety and a possible civil-disobedience campaign. Congo’s government must do more, she said, but international action is also crucial, including the arrest of �war criminals orchestrating this war from abroad.�

Well, Eve, you keep doing the grassroots thing and I’ll keep working on my thesis about prosecuting criminals at the ICC for sexual violence as a war crime.

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