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Article Excerpt
As a new justice institution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) needs to gain legitimacy not just with states but also in civil society, both at the global level and in the societies in which it intervenes. This article, based on interviews, NGO documents, newspaper articles, and participatory observation, looks at civil-society relations with the ICC in relation to its most recent and least publicized investigation--that in the Central African Republic (CAR). It charts the role of civil-society organizations, local and international, in the opening of the investigation, and it discusses the initial responses to the investigation of civil-society Figures and victims in the CAR. It finds that unlike in any of the other situations, the ICC's involvement in the CAR has been largely instigated by local civil-society figures and that, as a result, it operates in a quite receptive context. However, the slow pace of investigations and trials, the meager outreach to date, and the court's probable lack of capacity to provide victims with physical and material security are long-term challenges for its ability to meet local expectations of justice. KEYWORDS: International Criminal Court, global justice, civil society, war crimes, sexual violence, Central African Republic
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The successful negotiation of the Statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 gave rise to some extraordinarily Utopian, end-of-millennium comments by cosmopolitan-minded politicians and activists. The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, called it "a gift of hope to future generations, and a giant step forward in the march towards universal human rights and the rule of law." (1) Bill Pace, coordinator of the NGO Coalition for an ICC, predicted that the "ICC will save millions of humans from suffering unspeakably horrible and inhumane death in the coming decades." (2) Judged against these benchmarks, the court was bound to fall short. The court's existence has not spelled the end of impunity everywhere, nor has it brought solace to victims of human rights violations around the globe. Nonetheless, it is an unprecedented institution, and the actions of the different organs of the court are having a social and political impact on the situations on which it focuses.
As I have argued elsewhere, while the ICC could not have been established without the support of states, it is a creation of global civil society. (3) As such, it needs to work much harder than national courts to gain legitimacy. In the conduct of each of its early cases, it will be not just the suspect but also the court itself that is on trial. This battle for legitimacy takes place again in the realm of global civil society.
The ICC's investigation in northern Uganda has sparked heated debates among both civil-society figures and scholars about whether it serves the needs of victims and local populations, (4) but there has been less attention to the sociopolitical effects of the ICC's other investigations. This article, based on NGO documents, news articles, (5) interviews, and participatory observation, looks at civil-society relations with the ICC in relation to its most recent and least publicized investigation, in the Central African Republic (CAR). In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with four kinds of people: international NGO staff most involved in the CAR file; general representatives of civil society in the CAR, including journalists, religious leaders, and a retired politician; human rights advocates in the CAR; and fifteen victims, representing a mix of gender, age, location, and experiences, but all members of the country's main victim organization, the Organisation et Coordination pour le Development des Families en Detresse (OCODEFAD). For reasons of safety, interviews were conducted only in the capital Bangui, which is also the current focus of the ICC investigation. The fieldwork took place before the recent arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba, and thus this article cannot discuss local reactions to the arrest.
As I show below, the circumstances surrounding the opening of the CAR investigation, and the role of civil society in particular, have been substantially different from those in the other three investigations, in Uganda, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I will discuss general reactions to the investigation in the CAR before discussing opinions and sentiments under four headings: the necessarily selective character of the investigation; whether the pursuit of justice by the court may be detrimental to peace-building efforts; the detachment of the court from the lived reality of local populations and victims; and the participation, protection, and compensation of victims.
The Context of the ICC Investigation
The Two Coup Attempts
Ever since the mysterious death of its intended first president, Barthelemy Boganda, on the eve of independence, governance of the Central African Republic has been blighted by personal power struggles at the top. Only one of the five men who have been president since independence came to power through democratic elections. This was Ange-Felix Patasse, who won a multiparty contest sponsored by the international community in 1993, and who won again in 1999 in a more controversial election.
In October 2001 Patasse dismissed his army chief of staff, Francois Bozize, after questioning his loyalty in the latest coup attempt, and Bozize fled to Chad. A year later, on October 25, 2002, Bozize attacked the capital, Bangui, from the north, intending to take power. Patasse resisted the attack with support from troops led by his Chadian head of security, Abdoulaye Miskine, by a Congolese warlord, Jean-Pierre Bemba, and by a Libyan contingent. Fighting continued north of the capital in the following winter, and on March 15, while President Patasse was on a state visit, Bozize successfully captured the capital and declared himself president of a transition government. In May 2005, he was elected president in relatively free elections.
As is often the case in contemporary conflicts, the fighting in the CAR in 2002-2003 was marked by intimidation of civilians more than pitched battles. Rape of both women and men was particularly prevalent on the Patasse side, while there were killings, maltreatment, and pillage on both sides. (6) Between 2005 and mid-2007, two new rebellions in the northwest and northeast of the country were particularly marked by burning down of houses by government troops. (7)
Human Rights Organizations and the ICC
A handful of local human rights organizations operate in the CAR. Most are led by barristers or civil servants working in their spare time, and none have their own premises or full-time staff. (8) Two organizations, the Ligue Centrafricain pour la Defence des Droits de I'Homme (LCDH) and the Observatoire Centrafricain des Droits de l'Homme (OCDH) are longtime members of the Federation International des Ligue des Droits de l'Homme (FIDH).
After the violence of the first coup attempt in October 2002, LCDH went to the most affected neighborhoods and began to take witness statements. LCDH was aware that the ICC statute had come into force on July 1, 2002, and, in the words of its 2007 president, "when we realized the situation's seriousness, we ... took a public stand, saying these events were under the realm of the ICC's competence." (9) This was followed by an FIDH mission, which came to the same conclusion. In February 2003, the FIDH, with its affiliates LCDH and OCDH, sent its observations to the prosecutor of the ICC, requesting that he investigate the situation in the CAR. (10) After the further violence of March 15, 2003, additional information was added to the file.
The prosecutor acknowledged receipt of the report, but nothing further happened. Meanwhile, President Bozize, portraying himself as the savior of the Central Africans from Congolese mercenaries, showed an interest in taking his erstwhile enemies to the ICC. The LCDH president, Goungaye Wanfiyo, was offered the position of state counsel in the case, and he decided to accept because a case submitted by a state might be more difficult for the prosecutor to ignore. (11) The government referred the situation...
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