Today, August 28, 2013, marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream.” The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. King called for an end to injustice and to the denial of civil rights to African Americans.
Reflecting on King’s speech today, I immediately thought of another justice battle, now 20 years old, that genocide survivors in Rwanda have been fighting tirelessly. If you are a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi, or have followed Rwanda’s post-genocide issues closely, you have probably guessed which one I mean: the call for reparations for survivors. Like King 50 years ago, survivors also have a dream, 20 years after the genocide: that the moral, physical and material harm we suffered will one day be recognized and meaningfully repaired. Although this harm is often irreparable, international and national courts have required States including Rwanda to pay victims compensation for both material and psychological injury sustained as a direct result of their actions or policies. Genocide being a state crime, reparation serves both to acknowledge the violation and to sanction perpetrators and the state in question. The principle is simple: a society that once tolerated human rights abuses must come to terms with the past, accept responsibility, and try to make amends.
The crime of genocide causes serious and often pervasive damage to the physical and moral integrity of its survivors. This is particularly true for some 309,000 survivors of the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda whose visible and invisible wounds are still open today.
Without reparations, many survivors have struggled to move on, mostly because they lack the means. For a majority, gacaca courts have not provided a tangible outcome that improves their lives. This is especially frustrating, since it was survivors who made Gacaca and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda(UNICTR) work. It was they who took part and testified before the 11,000 gacaca courts that were established throughout Rwanda. When the Government of Rwanda introduced gacaca in 2001, it promised survivors that a law on compensation would be adopted that would lead to the establishment of a compensation fund. It promised that such a fund would also address reparation claims for moral damage. However, the fund was never established and as a result, most gacaca judgments that awarded survivors restitution or compensation for property damage were never fully enforced.
The lack of adequate reparation on a national level is made worse by the complete absence of reparation at the international level.
The UNICTR has delivered important judgments and held some of those most responsible to account, but it has had little impact on survivors. The UNICTR has not enabled survivors to participate in proceedings as survivors, but solely as witnesses. Past presidents of the UNICTR identified the lack of reparation for survivors as one of the main shortcomings of the tribunal. In 2002, then- President Pillay reminded the UN Security Council that “compensation for victims is essential if Rwanda is to recover from the genocidal experience”. A proposal submitted by UNICTR judges at the time to the UN Security Council to establish a specialized agency to administer a compensation scheme or trust fund was not heeded.
Many survivors believe the Rwandan government should keep its promise to establish a compensation fund, or explicitly support survivors’ call for an International Trust Fund, which would make it easier to enforce Gacaca judgments, in particular as many perpetrators are too poor themselves to pay compensation.
April 2014 will mark the 20th commemoration of the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. This will also mark the closure of the United Nations International Tribunal for Rwanda. As Martin Luther King said in the speech we remember today, now is the time. Now is the time for thousands of survivors to see their right to reparations honored. Now is the time for the government of Rwanda and the international community to live up to their promises and indeed their international law obligation to provide effective remedy to survivors. Now is the time to let the dream of survivors come true while they are still alive.
Article written by Albert Gasake
Related articles:
- Restorative justice for survivors of the Rwandan genocide : http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/noam-schimmel/restorative-justice_b_3399799.html
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