Follow Us:

Sudan: IWPR - Sanctions Deadlock as ICC Investigates and Justice for Women in Darfur

28 Feb 2006

In addition to the news digest circulated earlier today, please find below
excerpts from two articles published by the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting (IWPR). The first article reports on the Security Council deadlock
over proposals to sanction Sudanese officials allegedly responsible for impeding
peace efforts in Darfur and discusses the ICC's on-going investigation. The
second article explains that the court may offer the only hope for many rape
victims in Darfur to see justice done.

Please take note of the Coalition's policy on situations before the ICC (below),
which explicitly states that the CICC will not take a position on potential or
pending situations before the Court. The Coalition, however, will continue to
provide the most up-to-date information about the ICC.

Warm Regards,
Esti T. Tambay
Information and Analysis Officer
Coalition for the International Criminal Court

**********************************************
1. IWPR, Fred Bridgland, "Darfur Sanctions Deadlock as ICC Considers
Prosecutions" - 28 February 2006
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=acr&s=f&o=259927&apc_state=henh

"Security Council can’t agree on punishment for Sudanese blocking peace process,
while ICC examines evidence of Darfur atrocities.

The United Nations is reportedly split on proposals to punish Sudanese officials
and rebel leaders allegedly responsible for impeding peace efforts in Darfur,
where International Criminal Court, ICC, chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has
launched an investigation into war crimes.

As violence again flared in northern Darfur, the UN Security Council met
February 27 to consider sanctions against officials deemed to be a threat to the
peace effort or human rights in the area. [...]

US ambassador John Bolton, the current council president, told reporters the
15-member body wanted to “move forward expeditiously on targeted sanctions”.

“The purpose … is to apply pressure … to people who are violating the arms
embargo, not contributing to our effort to establish an effective peace process
in Darfur and restore the deteriorating security situation there,” he said.

However, conflict arose between members at a closed-door session during which
China, Russia and Qatar are believed to have opposed sanctions, while the US,
Britain, Denmark and France were in favour. The result: continued deadlock.
[...]

The ICC’s main work is so far concentrated on Darfur, northern Uganda and the
Ituri region of the Congo, but this heavy concentration on one continent has
perplexed many Africans. They argue that it would have made public relations
sense for such a new and important international court to have cast its net over
several continents, including Europe from where it operates.

President al-Bashir has warned that Sudan will not cooperate and has also sworn
"before Allah three times" that he will never extradite a Sudanese citizen to
any foreign court.

The Darfur case could therefore end up demonstrating the ICC's powerlessness,
especially as it has no police officers and must rely on the 100 countries that
have signed its charter to make arrests. After nearly four years of operation,
none have yet been made nor any prosecutions started in the Dutch capital.

Meanwhile, Moreno-Ocampo and his team, based in the ICC's futuristic,
white-facaded, 15-storey headquarters in The Hague - complete with eight holding
cells should anyone held responsible for war crimes in Darfur ever be arrested -
puzzle how to fulfill their obligation to bring offenders to justice.

While 600 civil servants, most of them lawyers, continue to draw their salaries
at ICC headquarters, the militias on horse and camels in faraway Darfur continue
to spread death and mayhem. "It is a giant crime scene," wrote the New York
Times' Mark Lacey, the most recent foreign correspondent to reach the remote and
poorly developed region. "There are assaults and homicides and rapes and
larcenies across Darfur, but there is hardly anyone, it seems, seriously trying
to solve the crimes." "

2. IWPR, Christine Butegwa, "Women in Darfur Look to ICC" - 28 February 2006
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=acr&s=f&o=259915&apc_state=henh

"If you are a woman in the Darfur region of Sudan who has been raped and you
want to lay a charge, it is virtually certain that legal officers will
automatically reduce your allegation to one of assault. If you persevere with
your rape accusation, you will be told to do the impossible and provide four
male witnesses to support your charge.

As a result, sexual violence goes almost totally unpunished and is one of the
biggest violations of women's rights in Darfur. It is why members of my
organisation, the African Women's Development and Communications Network,
FEMNET, and of other women's rights groups in Africa have high hopes that the
new International Criminal Court in The Hague will be able to change the
situation.

Rape, according to the special report on Darfur by Italian judge Antonio Cassese
for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is of epidemic proportions in
Sudan's far western province, a largely semi-desert area the size of France.

Most of the rape, according to the Cassese report, which is now the basis of an
ICC investigation into human rights crimes in Darfur, is carried out by
government Arab militias called janjaweed (armed men on horse and camel backs).
[...]

In the Jebel Marra town of Rokero, an international aid worker described to the
Washington Post's Emily Wax the mass rape by the janjaweed of some 400 women.
"It's systematic," the aid worker told the reporter. "Everyone knows how the
father carries the lineage in the culture. They [the janjaweed] want more Arab
babies [by African women] to take the land. The scary thing is that I don't
think we realise the extent of how widespread this is yet." [...]

Despite the fact that rape survivors frequently say they can identify their
attackers, justice has been denied. But now the decision by the UN Security
Council to refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC may offer the only hope for
many women and girls in Darfur to see justice done.

Women’s rights in Darfur are freely violated because of gender-based
discrimination in the national laws of Sudan. According to Jane Lindrio Alao, a
psychologist with the Amel Centre, rape is virtually impossible to prove in
Sudanese law. Most people accused of rape are only charged with having committed
assault, which carries a maximum jail sentence of one year. Rape can only be
said to have occurred and admitted in court if there are four male witnesses.
“All four should witness the actual penetration," said Alao. "So even if you
could get two such witnesses, the accused could not be charged. How many women
have the luxury of having witnesses to their rape?”

The archaic and discriminatory laws have led to perpetrators of sexual violence
acting with impunity. Alao confirmed that the majority of perpetrators of rape
in Darfur are from the janjaweed and Sudan's armed forces. The Sudanese national
courts are affiliated to the government party and have therefore failed to
provide justice to the people of Darfur. Women who dare to take rape cases to
court are frequently arrested and accused of waging war on the government. [...]

Although some members of the Security Council, such as Algeria, Nigeria and the
United States, felt that an African tribunal would be the most appropriate
mechanism, the Darfur Consortium argued that the ICC was both an African and an
international mechanism. According to Dr Yitiha Simbeye, a member of the
consortium and dean at the Faculty of Law in Makumira University, Tanzania, the
consortium further supported the referral to the ICC because it is a permanent
court and this would therefore save on time and resources required to set up a
new special court. “The ICC referral and present jurisdiction also signals to
the Darfurians that the whole world is concerned with the situation in Darfur,”
said Simbeye.

The 1997 Rome Statute creating the ICC identifies crimes of sexual violence such
as rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and forced pregnancy as crimes
against humanity when they are committed as part of a widespread or systematic
attack directed against a civilian population. The ICC has created a Victims and
Witnesses Unit within its Registry at The Hague to provide protective measures,
security arrangements, counselling and other assistance for witnesses and
victims. The ICC therefore offers an alternative avenue for justice - other than
that provided by Sudan - for the women and girls who comprise almost ninety per
cent of the victims in the Darfur conflict.

Although the ICC has severe limitations, the Darfur Consortium has high hopes
for it. We at FEMNET and other Darfur Consortium members will give full support
to ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in the investigation process.

For the women’s movement in Darfur, what they are looking for is fair trials and
compensation to the victims of sexual violence. “Refugees and rape victims among
the women are keeping silent and protecting themselves, waiting for the day of
the ICC,” said Alao.

Christine Butegwa is Communications Officer with the Nairobi-based African
Women’s Development and Communication. Network, FEMNET."


**********************************************
CICC’s policy on the referral and prosecution of situations before the ICC:

The Coalition for the ICC is not an organ of the Court. The CICC is an
independent NGO movement dedicated to the establishment of the International
Criminal Court as a fair, effective, and independent international organization.
The Coalition will continue to provide the most up-to-date information about the
ICC and to help coordinate global action to effectively implement the Rome
Statute of the ICC. The Coalition will also endeavor to respond to basic queries
and to raise awareness about the ICC’s trigger mechanisms and procedures, as
they develop. The Coalition as a whole, and its secretariat, do not endorse or
promote specific investigations or prosecutions or take a position on situations
before the ICC. However, individual CICC members may endorse referrals, provide
legal and other support on investigations, or develop partnerships with local
and other organizations in the course of their efforts.

Communications to the ICC can be sent to:
ICC
P.O. Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands