The Outreach Challenge of the Lubanga Trial: Another First for the International Criminal Court
On 26 January, the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, former President of the Union des Patriots Congolais (UPC) and the first person ever to be arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC), commenced in the Hague. Lubanga has been charged with individual criminal responsibility for enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 as soldiers and using them to actively participate in hostilities in the Ituri region, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in 2002-2003.
Following his arrest in the DRC, Lubanga has been in ICC custody in the Hague since March 2006. On 29 January 2007, the charges against him were confirmed. Although the trial was suspended in 2008 due to issues related to the prosecutor’s evidence, the trial finally got underway in January (For more information on the conflict and tribulations of the legal processes, see “ICC Decides to Release Lubanga; Prosecution Appeals.”)
Now that the trial has actually begun, it brings a sense of hope to those Congolese awaiting justice, peace and security. For the ICC, it is its first trial, marking an important, and long-awaited, step towards trying large-scale human rights violations and ending impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
Also a first is its outreach campaign around an unfolding trial. The trial is being accompanied by an extensive campaign through which the Court is attempting to make its proceedings accessible to Congolese civilians thousands of miles away in areas with limited access to the media. The ICC’s Public Information and Documentation Section (PIDS) has prepared a Strategic Plan for Outreach which provides a rationale and framework for the activities. As indicated in the Plan, “independence, impartiality and fairness are defining attributes of justice; therefore making the judicial proceedings public is a central element of a fair trial and necessary to ensuring the quality of justice.”
Information and outreach activities in the DRC started in July 2004. A preliminary needs assessment and creation of local partner networks was followed by the formation of a team that conducted outreach activities in the Kinshasa area in 2006. Its goal was to explain the ICC and its investigation into Lubanga to local authorities, grassroots organizations and the media in communities most affected by the crimes being investigated. In 2007, outreach activities continued in Kinshasa and intensified in eastern DRC and particularly Ituri, the region where the Court’s first investigations focussed. Communities in Bunia, Aru, Mahagi, Kasenyi, Goma and Mambassa were encouraged to monitor and understand the ongoing judicial proceedings.
Since early 2009, the outreach strategy has had two focussed phases. Between 16-24 January the intention was to signal the beginning of the trial and explain the stages and key elements of a fair trial. The primary goal during this period was to create awareness and understanding of the crimes that Lubanga allegedly committed through an intensive media campaign. With radio and television networks as its main distribution channels PIDS produced three types of programmes in French: “an introductory programme about the trial of Lubanga, a programme entitled Ask the Court, answering questions raised by participants during outreach activities, and a third programme entitled ICC at a Glance, containing summaries of the hearings.” Phase two of the outreach efforts are ongoing, and focus on people’s participation in the judicial processes of the Court by encouraging dialogue and discussion about the Court’s judicial developments, the role of the ICC, the role of the national government and courts, as well as the role of the community as part of the organized public events throughout the trial. The secondary goal is to inspire a reaction amongst citizens through a media campaign that explains these crimes and creates a sense of identification with fellow citizens against whom these crimes were committed so that each citizen will be able to identify with the victims.
Despite all its efforts, the ICC is struggling with many challenges that seem to be deep-rooted and likely insurmountable in the time span given for this particular outreach campaign. The most difficult is the vested interest of some in the DRC in preventing the population from following the proceedings. Second, the communications capacity in the DRC is limited and poses a major challenge to guaranteeing widespread access to the trial’s proceedings. PIDS is collaborating with important radio and TV networks in distributing information.
In terms of access to visual media, many Congolese have no access to the internet or television to follow the proceedings, and hence are dependent on publicly organized screenings that show the progress of the trial. But these screenings themselves have proven to be problematic. On the first day of the trial, the ICC organised a public screening of the trial proceedings in Bunia, in Ituri. The screening was attended by about 400 people but had to be suspended because of security concerns after some of Lubanga's supporters, who appeared to be the majority of attendants, voiced their disagreement with the Court. Many victims and survivors felt too threatened to attend and did not want to be recognised by members and supporters of Lubanga’s UPC. When the public screening did not take place on the following day, the day when the defence opening statement was scheduled, the defence counsel made a complaint in Court. The public explanation provided was that the screening had not been possible due to a technical problem with the satellite feed.
Congolese lawyer with the Lubumbashi Bar and member of the African Association of Human Rights (ASADHO), Freddy Kitoko, stated a few weeks into the trial that Lubanga still wields great influence in Ituri where supporters continue to almost blindly obey him and often refer to him as “the liberator.” With a majority of Congolese citizens dependent on word-of-mouth information on the trial’s proceedings it has proven easy for those seeking to misinform and twist information to spread false rumours. Descartes Mponge Malasi, south-Kivu focal point for the Congolese Coalition for the ICC, recently reported that in Goma and Bukavu, for instance, that there are stories circulating that the Office of the Prosecutor does not have access to additional witnesses and that Lubanga will be released in the near future.
The ICC is dependent on the Congolese press to inform citizens about the Lubanga trial’s daily events, procedures, motions and rebuttals, but often finds that this is done with mixed results. Though the interest in the Lubanga case has been high amongst journalists, in general Congolese reporters tend to be insufficiently trained and unfamiliar with the legal specifics of the ICC. “Sometimes they write inaccuracies or spread rumors,” said Pau Madidi, then spokesman of the ICC in the Congo, in early 2008. “Fortunately, not everyone has this vice, but it [the ICC efforts of working with and educating journalists about the ICC since 2006] may have been insufficient to overcome some pervasive misconceptions.”
The coverage of the trial has also brought to the fore other criticisms. For instance, journalists wonder why the ICC is not prosecuting others whom they say are really behind the conflicts in the Ituri region. In particular, some have called on the ICC to investigate Lubanga’s alleged backers in Uganda. For example, journalist Wairagala Wakabi, has suggested that “[p]erhaps the Office of The Prosecutor at the ICC should take a keener interest in Uganda’s past activities in Ituri. According to testimony, Ugandan commanders helped Lubanga establish his group, train his fighters, and obtain arms.”
Things can change fast prompting Freddy Kitoko to conclude that after an initial keen interest in the trial by the media a diminished interest amongst Congolese observers was readily detected.
It is widely known that the majority of crimes in the Congo go uninvestigated and unpunished, and the judicial system is chaotic and is shielding many corrupt judges, which in turn has created a widespread distrust of the legal system by ordinary citizens. In January 2008, Madidi said that an additional issue is the fact that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes committed before July 2002, when the Rome Statute creating the Court entered into force. This leaves many Congolese citizens, who have experienced war crimes dating back decades, with little hope for justice.
The ICC is trying to address these questions through its outreach. Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Executive Director of WITNESS, a New York-based human rights organization that uses video and online technologies to raise awareness of human rights violations, said recently that “the ICC is a modern Court using the tools of modern age.” In addition to live satellite transmission of the trial, which faces many challenges as indicated earlier, the ICC’s PIDS provides journalists with a rough cut edit of weekly summaries of the proceedings. This edit is available in audio and video format on the ICC website for downloading. The court’s proceedings may also be followed, with a 30-minute delay, on the ICC website via the following link http://livestream.xs4all.nl/icc1.asx.
In a February blog entry on the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC) website, Mponge Malasi writes that “while the ICC field office in Kinshasa is experiencing some success with the distribution of its audio visual summaries, much work remains in terms of improving and expanding access to public information. And yet the ICC alone cannot satisfy the demand for information day to day. Robust outreach must be regarded as a high priority by all actors fighting against impunity.”
Others in the human rights field are also trying to address the need for information. The Open Society Justice Initiative, working in partnership with WITNESS and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting launched an online resource that provides up-to-date information on the progress of the Lubanga trial and creates a forum for reader commentary. The website can be found at http://www.lubangatrial.org.
WITNESS, on their website, is posing the question whether video can bring a warlord to justice. Their answer is that Lubanga’s trial is a “good sign that it can help.” Valuable information on weekly trial round-ups, daily blogs and video interviews can be accessed, in addition to video advocacy work on child soldiers, via the following link: http://hub.witness.org/Lubanga-Trial.
The CICC has launched a blog initiative called “in situ” facilitating a direct dialogue between its members on the ground, international justice experts and interested members of the broader public. The blog features posts by some of its 2,500 members in 150 countries around the world and can be found via the following link http://iccnow.org/blog/.
With all the available technologies enabling us to document, preserve and share information the question remains whether all these outreach efforts by our colleagues in the human rights arena and the ICC itself not only brings public attention to the phenomenon of child soldiers but reaches the Congolese people who are in urgent need of unbiased information. On 27 March the ICC announced that its second trial in the case The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui is set to commence on 24 September 2009 (for more information on this case, see "Chui Arrest a Milestone in the Fight Against Impunity in DRC," Refugee Rights News, Volume 4, Issue 2, April 2008 (updated July 2008)). It will be the ICC’s second chance to contour its continuing outreach campaign in the DRC.