Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Editor's Note
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Authors
- Fighting Impunity: African States and the International Criminal Court
- The Rome Statute and Universal Human Rights
- Challenging the Culture of Impunity for Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes
- Impunity Through Immunity: The Kenya Situation and the International Criminal Court
- Defence Perspectives: State Cooperation and ICC Detention: A Decade Past an Arrest Warrant
- Towards a Multi-Layered System of International Criminal Justice
- Complementarity in Practice and ICC Implementing Legislation: Lessons from Uganda
- Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Implications of the Termination of the Kenyatta Case Before the ICC
- Transforming Legal Concepts and Gender Perceptions
- Exploring Efforts to Resolve the Tension Between the AU and the ICC over the Bashir Saga
- When We Don't Speak the Same Language: The Challenges of Multilingual Justice at the ICC
- The Role of the African Union in International Criminal Justice: Force for Good or Bad?
- A Seed for World Peace Growing in Africa: The Kampala Amendments on the Crime of Aggression and the Monsoon of Malabo
- The Rights of Victims of Serious Violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law: A Human Rights Perspective
- Boko Haram's Insurgency in Nigeria: Exploring the Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Pathways
- Ten Years of International Criminal Court Practice – Trials, Achievements and Tribulations: Is the ICC Today what Africa Expects or Wants?
- Universal Jurisdiction, African Perceptions of the International Criminal Court and the New AU Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights
- Punishment as Prevention? The International Criminal Court and the Prevention of International Crimes
- Complementarity and Africa: Tackling International Crimes at the Domestic Level
- The Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
- Can there be Justice Without Reparations? Identifying Gaps in Gender Justice
- Transitional Justice and the ICC: Lessons from Rwanda
- Looking Forward, Anticipating Challenges: Making Sense of Disjunctures in Meanings of Culpability
- Building the Base: Local Accountability for Conflict-Period Sexual Violence
- Safety and Security of Protected Witnesses and Acquitted and Released Persons: Lessons from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
- Bridging the Legal Gap: The International Initiative for Opening Negotiations on a Multilateral Treaty for Mutual Legal Assistance and Extradition in the Domestic Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes
Can there be Justice Without Reparations? Identifying Gaps in Gender Justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2017
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Editor's Note
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Authors
- Fighting Impunity: African States and the International Criminal Court
- The Rome Statute and Universal Human Rights
- Challenging the Culture of Impunity for Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes
- Impunity Through Immunity: The Kenya Situation and the International Criminal Court
- Defence Perspectives: State Cooperation and ICC Detention: A Decade Past an Arrest Warrant
- Towards a Multi-Layered System of International Criminal Justice
- Complementarity in Practice and ICC Implementing Legislation: Lessons from Uganda
- Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Implications of the Termination of the Kenyatta Case Before the ICC
- Transforming Legal Concepts and Gender Perceptions
- Exploring Efforts to Resolve the Tension Between the AU and the ICC over the Bashir Saga
- When We Don't Speak the Same Language: The Challenges of Multilingual Justice at the ICC
- The Role of the African Union in International Criminal Justice: Force for Good or Bad?
- A Seed for World Peace Growing in Africa: The Kampala Amendments on the Crime of Aggression and the Monsoon of Malabo
- The Rights of Victims of Serious Violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law: A Human Rights Perspective
- Boko Haram's Insurgency in Nigeria: Exploring the Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Pathways
- Ten Years of International Criminal Court Practice – Trials, Achievements and Tribulations: Is the ICC Today what Africa Expects or Wants?
- Universal Jurisdiction, African Perceptions of the International Criminal Court and the New AU Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights
- Punishment as Prevention? The International Criminal Court and the Prevention of International Crimes
- Complementarity and Africa: Tackling International Crimes at the Domestic Level
- The Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
- Can there be Justice Without Reparations? Identifying Gaps in Gender Justice
- Transitional Justice and the ICC: Lessons from Rwanda
- Looking Forward, Anticipating Challenges: Making Sense of Disjunctures in Meanings of Culpability
- Building the Base: Local Accountability for Conflict-Period Sexual Violence
- Safety and Security of Protected Witnesses and Acquitted and Released Persons: Lessons from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
- Bridging the Legal Gap: The International Initiative for Opening Negotiations on a Multilateral Treaty for Mutual Legal Assistance and Extradition in the Domestic Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes
Summary
INTRODUCTION
A key obstacle to gender justice identified by survivor witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), is the disconcerting absence of reparations. Survivor witnesses of sexual violence interviewed for this study indicated that they had great expectations of receiving compensation for their pain, suffering, and great loss. This article focuses specifically on survivor witnesses who contracted HIV as a result of the rapes perpetrated during the Rwanda genocide. It discusses one of the findings of my PhD research. Using the voices, experiences, and silences of survivor witnesses of the sexual violence in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the study engaged survivor witnesses in a continuous dialogue since 2005 and used their voices and experiences to interrogate the International Criminal Justice System (ICJS) as partly represented by the ICTR. Voices of survivor witnesses on reparations, their experience, and their lived reality reveal an important point of reference to the missing link between reality and rhetoric within transitional justice interventions. Most importantly, the voices of the survivor witnesses refer to context specific notions of both individual and collective reparations which might take the gender agenda further for other tribunals already implementing the reparation regime; for example, the ICC and many other national courts. Victims and witnesses called to testify at the ICC can now participate and receive compensation. This paper encourages an informed discussion in order to explore the notion of reparations which can assist public actors to look at timely reparations through the lens of survivors.
Over 21 years after the 1994 Rwanda genocide, survivor witnesses have remained without legal redress or reparations because, among other reasons, the provisions of the ICTR are limited. In this regard, the discussion focuses on the hopes, concerns, and fears of survivor witnesses who interacted with the international criminal justice system as partly represented by ICTR.
Concerns of victims have been echoed by public actors in international criminal justice. During my discussions with the prosecutor on 2 January 2014, he confirmed that one of the concerns which he feels was not addressed because of limitations in the provisions of the ICTR was reparations, and said that ‘if the tribunal was to start again, that is one of the most important requests I would make to the Security Council…
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- The International Criminal Court and AfricaOne Decade On, pp. 525 - 548Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2016