Earlier this month the International Criminal Court (ICC) handed down its first verdict, finding former rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo guilty of conscripting and using child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This historic verdict was over three years in the making, and comes just before the court celebrates its 10 year anniversary in July of this year. While this marks a critical milestone in the international justice movement, the court’s critics and supporters alike point out there is much room for improvement, not least in the length of time required for the ICC to deliver justice.

But the ICC is just a component of a larger system of international justice, notes Phakiso Mochochoko, head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity, and Cooperation Division of the ICC, in ICTJ’s last podcast in our series on complementarity. In fact, “the first line of defense for ending impunity is that of states.”

The Rome Statute "created a system of international justice, with national judicial systems being at the center of this as the first bulwark against impunity," he explains. “The ICC is intended to work with national judicial systems and to intervene only if and when such national judicial systems are either unwilling or unable generally to prosecute.”

Under this rubric, he says, a crucial part of the ICC’s mandate is to work with national judicial systems, ensuring they are able to carry out investigations and prosecutions of war crimes and crimes against humanity. We can look to the International Crimes Division of Uganda’s High Court as an example.

“We have worked with the Ugandan authorities, sharing our experiences and information with them and showing them at least how to handle cases of this magnitude. And this has resulted in the war crimes tribunal in Uganda being able to investigate and prosecute one of the criminals in Uganda.”

The global struggle against impunity relies on a frontline of national judicial systems willing and able to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. “We have talked enough about complementarity that there are enough people who understand it,” Mochochoko concludes. “It is now time for action.”

Photo: Demonstrators in Guatemala. Sandra Sebastian, Plaza Publica

For the past five weeks, former dictator of Guatemala General Efrain Rios Montt has been standing trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. He and his co-accused, former military intelligence chief Jose Mauricio Rodriquez Sanchez, are charged with responsibility in systematic massacres of Guatemala’s indigenous population during the country’s civil war.

After decades of efforts by lawyers, victims groups, and civil society, justice for Rios Montt finally seemed to be in reach. With a verdict expected in a matter of days, a dramatic turn of events interrupted the trial: in a move unseen previously in the legal world, a lower court motioned to annul the trial proceedings, on the basis of an appeal lodged 17 months earlier. However, the presiding judge in the trial rejected the motion as illegal, an announcement that was met with bursts of cheers and applause from the courtroom gallery. A number of motions and countermotions are now being decided by the Guatemala’s Constitutional Court midst a tense political atmosphere.

To discuss this chain of controversial upsets in the Rios Montt trial, ICTJ Communications Director Refik Hodzic spoke with two transitional justice experts who have just returned from the courtroom in Guatemala City: Susan Kemp, prosecutions consultant for ICTJ, and Marcie Merksy, Director of Program Office. Informed by extensive work in both criminal justice and Guatemala, they offer an analysis of the dramatic events of the past week, discuss the legal and political complexities of the case, and consider possible scenarios that could develop in the coming days and weeks.

Years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final recommendations, victims of apartheid-era crimes are still fighting for adequate reparation and rehabilitation. Will the government of South Africa listen?

More than 40 years of apartheid in South Africa cast a long shadow of human rights violations, including massacres, torture, lengthy imprisonment of activists, and crippling racial discrimination.

Despite the groundbreaking work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the 1990s, progress has been slow. Most efforts to achieve accountability for crimes committed during apartheid have failed, and to date, the government of South Africa has ignored the TRC’s recommendations on rehabilitation and reparations for victims.

As a result, many survivors lack the means to deal with material and psychological consequences of apartheid violence, and must face enormous hurdles to have their demands heard.

In the latest episode of ICTJ’s podcast, we speak with ICTJ Senior Program Adviser Howard Varney, a practicing advocate at the Johannesburg Bar, who worked with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and continues to represent victims of past conflicts in the courts of South Africa to vindicate their rights.

As our exploration of the story of the Special Court for Sierra Leone continues, we talk with the United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, Stephen J. Rapp.

In this interview with Hannah Dunphy, Ambassador Rapp looks back on some of the most memorable moments during his tenure as prosecutor for the Special Court, including the experience of the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. In assessing the long-term impact of the SCSL, he reflects on new projects of accountability and what lessons they can incorporate from the experience of Sierra Leone. In closing, Ambassador Rapp underscores the importance of national prosecutions for crimes of mass atrocity, and shares his vision of the future of international justice.

Our latest episode of ICTJ's podcast series on the legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone offers perspectives from the Principal Defender of the SCSL, Fatmata Claire Carlton-Hanciles. In this conversation with ICTJ, Mrs. Carlton-Hanciles reflects on the challenges of setting up the SCSL, the accomplishments it has achieved, and why a strong defense was critical to the Court's legitimacy.

In an affirming step in the fight against impunity, Uganda’s Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) refused a court’s request earlier this month to grant amnesty to former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel commander Thomas Kwoyelo. Kwoyelo is facing 53 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity before the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the High Court of Uganda; those accused of such crimes cannot be granted immunity from prosecution, the DPP contended.

This is the country’s first trial for war crimes committed by the LRA rebel movement, whose tactics are characterized by brutal attacks on civilians and the abduction of children. To further ICTJ’s special podcast series on complementarity, we sat down with Justice Dan Akiiki Kiiza, head of the ICD, to discuss the work of the High Court.

The ICD provides a case study of complementarity in practice: “the experience of those people who are already benefitting at the ICD, from the complementarity; where there are shortfalls, where there are strong points, what can be done to improve or eliminate other problems.”

The discussion highlights that one of the challenges faced by the court has been an ongoing debate between peace and justice; whether criminal procedures threaten the stability achieved by the Juba peace talks.

"People wanted peace instead of accountability," Akiiki Kiiza explains. "So there was one section who was saying 'now, since we have gotten the ceasefire and there's no more fighting, now why do you go to trying these people in court? When you take them to court, others may start fighting again.'"

But the popular response to the Kwoyelo trial has been overwhelmingly positive, he contends. “Crowds of people actually turned up at the court in Gulu to witness the opening of this trial… People were interested to see that at least in the long run, justice is being realized.”

A Congolese man sits in a social center on May 29, 2012 at the Mugunga III internally displaced people camp near the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. PHIL MOORE/AFP/GettyImages

The decision on reparations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the case of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga sets a historic precedent, but it should not be celebrated until victims in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are fully compensated through an inclusive and participatory process.

The Lubanga decision stated that reparations “go beyond the notion of punitive justice, towards a solution which is more inclusive, encourages participation and recognizes the need to provide effective remedies for victims.”

Yet Ruben Carranza, director of ICTJ’s Reparative Justice program, is cautious about celebrating before the process is complete. In ICTJ’s latest podcast, Carranza warns that the impact of the decision will only be proven through delivering its promise of compensation. “It will be important for those supporting the ICC, and those who are interested in international justice, to ensure that it goes beyond celebrating this milestone,” said Carranza. “We should go beyond recognizing a step as being historically significant, because it may not yet be significant for those who actually should receive reparations.”

July 1, 2012 marked the 10th anniversary of the International Criminal Court (ICC). On this day in 2002, the Rome Statute entered into force to establish the world’s first permanent, international criminal tribunal.

To mark this milestone, we look back on the ICC’s first decade, and look ahead to the future of the first major international institution of the 21st century. For an insider’s perspective, we invited ICC Judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi to speak with us for ICTJ’s latest podcast. Judge Fernandez, an Argentinan lawyer and diplomat, is also a visiting professor at the American University Washington College of Law’s Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is expected to deliver its first sentence in the coming weeks. Last week the ICC prosecutor recommended that Thomas Lubanga, a former warlord convicted of using child soldiers in the ongoing armed conflict in the DRC, serve 30 years in prison for these crimes—less if he offers a "genuine apology" to his victims and to the communities destroyed by the brutal rebel group under his command.

This trial, historic as the first to reach a verdict before the ICC, has the potential to set another critical precedent in the fight against impunity for mass atrocity. Acting under the Rome Statute requirement that the court “establish principles relating to reparations” for victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, judges are in the process of deliberating whether Lubanga’s victims who participated in the trial proceedings will receive compensation for the harms they suffered.

Aside from being the “test case” of the court’s reparations mandate, the Lubanga sentence presents unique challenges in this regard. The verdict ruled on a narrow set of crimes; only a small number of victims of forced recruitment are eligible to receive compensation from the court. But this is arguably a mere fraction of those who suffered human rights abuses at the hand of Lubanga or his subordinates, victims who should be able to claim the right to reparations under both international and domestic Congolese law.

Investigators also failed to recover any assets belonging to Lubanga that could provide funding for compensation efforts, leaving this burden on state supporters of the ICC through the court’s Trust Fund for Victims.

Grappling with these and other challenges and questions, the ICC invited submissions from legal and reparations experts before the decision is issued. ICTJ’s submission recommends the case formally acknowledge and allow access to the proceedings to all victims of violations, the consideration of collective as well as individual reparations, and a mapping and needs assessment, among other considerations.

Read a summary of ICTJ’s recommendations. The full submission can be found here.

In our latest podcast, ICTJ’s Reparations Program Director Ruben Carranza discusses further the challenges of this case in testing the reparations mandate of the ICC, the recommendations ICTJ’s submission puts forth, and the lessons the ICC can learn from other courts around the world who have faced the task of ruling on reparations.

Ivory Coast has embarked on a process of addressing the legacy of internal strife that culminated in the violence following the 2010 presidential elections. There seems to be genuine political will to pursue transitional justice through criminal investigations and truth-seeking, but serious challenges remain.

The conflict in Ivory Coast has simmered for over a decade, its roots in the struggle for a successor to the first president of the country, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who assumed the role following the country’s independence in 1960.

The first major crisis occurred in 2000 when political leaders invoked ethnicity as a political factor in an attempt to exclude the most prominent opposition leader, Alassane Ouattara, from presidential candidacy. This left the country deeply divided, and tensions endured through the next decade.

Elections finally took place in October of 2010, pitting the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo against Ouattara in the second round of voting. Gbagbo lost the vote but refused to step down, initiating a cycle of bloody violence in which some 3,000 people died, sexual violence was rampant, and hundreds of thousands were displaced. Ultimately, the forces loyal to Ouattara succeeded in taking the capital Abidjan and ousting Gbagbo.

Following an invitation from the new government, the International Criminal Court investigated the violence. In addition, a UN commission of inquiry was established to investigate the violence and recommend possible ways to redress its consequences.

As one of his first decisions upon assuming office, President Ouattara formed the Cellule Spéciale d'Enquête, or the Special Investigative Unit under the Ministry of Justice, to examine the crimes punishable under national law—economic crimes and crimes against the state. In addition, and following the recommendation of the UN commission, Ouattara also mandated a national commission of inquiry to investigate violations of human rights committed during the post-election violence.

In addition to the two national justice instruments, the Ivory Coast also created a truth-seeking body—the National Commission for Dialogue, Truth, and Reconciliation (Commission Dialogue, Vérité et Réconciliation). Its mandate is to identify the root causes of the conflict, the acts and patterns of violations, and ways for the country to overcome these legacies through reconciliation and recognition of those who were victimized.

This makes Ivory Coast a country with one of the most active transitional justice processes underway at this time. In our latest podcast we discuss the progress and the challenges facing this process with Suliman Baldo, head of ICTJ’s Africa Program.