ICC must consider the security of war victims

Consequently, all nine countries that share a border with Sudan are on a war footing. Without a government for two decades, nearby Somalia is already a major destabilising factor in the region.

Uganda’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army, long supported by Khartoum and whose leaders are also wanted by the ICC, is regrouping in vast ungoverned border territory between Sudan, Uganda and DR Congo.

The 2005 comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) that ended Sudan’s half century-long north-south war risks breaking down, while the Darfur crisis in western Sudan remains active.

These uncertainties drive an undisguised arms race in the region. If the CPA collapses, many fear a transnational atrocity site like none this region has known.

I recognise most of those who harbour these fears. They are neither pillaging presidents nor ravaging rebels. Like the child refugee I was a few decades ago, they are victims driven by neither dollar nor dinar; widowed refugees from their homesteads, unsure whether the next meal will come or whether they will be alive at the next dawn.

VICTIMS NOW SEEM TO BE THE PEOple paying the highest cost for international justice. They suffer threats of death, exile, and other forms of persecution for their commitment to justice with little protection, assistance or acknowledgement from governments or international institutions.

I have heard claims that those who express uncertainties about the work of the ICC in Africa may have been purchased by powerful enemies of justice. This makes victims seem expendable and discredits their well-founded fears as dubious.

Most victims need reassurance that when the neighbourhood mass murderer arrives, their only defence is not the promise of a warrant from a distant tribunal on thin resources. They are right in asking that the promise of justice should be accompanied by credible protection from reprisals. The ICC’s friends must address this.

While the misbegotten duel between supposed imperialists and alleged impunity apologists persists, the deadly business of mass atrocities continues unchecked, its victims in Africa fret, and the credibility of the ICC suffers.

To overcome these difficulties, four things are needed. First, the ICC’s resources must be improved to focus more on winning back the trust of victims through better outreach and effective protection. Thus, better co-ordination is needed between African governments, the ICC, the UN at its highest levels, governments and philanthropies.

Next, the African Union must translate its rhetoric against impunity into a programme of action, showing that African lives matter and it will not issue a free pass to those — big or small — who violate Africans.

Third, principled multilateral diplomacy is needed to reassure both governments and victims that the Great Lakes countries will not be allowed to become a killing field. In particular, the five permanent members of the Security Council should use their strategic heft to engage intensively with this looming crisis.

Finally, we must re-establish mutual respect among people in the advocacy communities who sometimes disagree as to means but mostly agree as to ends.

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu heads the Africa Programme of the Open Society Justice Initiative and co-chairs the Darfur Consortium in Kampala, Uganda and New York, US