Ituri Court Reforms Stumble Along

International efforts to reform the judiciary in the Ituri province of north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, have produced mixed results, according to local NGOs.



Despite some initial improvements in infrastructure and training, extensive corruption and the lack of effective protection for witnesses mean that a fully-functioning judicial system – let alone one capable of trying war crimes suspects from the region – remains a distant hope.



“At the material level there has been equipment given to the judges,” said Godefroid Mpiana, formerly of Justice Plus, an NGO with local operations in Bunia, the capital of the Ituri region. “But on other aspects, like witness protection, nothing has been solved.”



When Ituri’s bloody inter-ethnic conflict came to an end in late 2003, the European Commission launched a pilot project to reform the judicial system in the east of the country, which had been devastated by the fighting.



Initially, the project for judicial reconstruction was confined to Bunia, but in 2006 the EC announced a wider-reaching initiative that would apply to the rest of the region.



The Restoration of the Judicial System in Eastern Congo, REJUSCO, as the project is known, is funded jointly by the European Commission, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK to the tune of 11.7 million euro.



When the reforms were first being implemented in 2003 and 2004, judges were brought in from other provinces in the DRC and lived in compounds protected by the United Nations Mission in the country, MONUC. They were also paid a supplement on top of their meagre salaries, which at the time amounted to 20 US dollars per month.



As part of the process, judges, prosecutors and administrative staff underwent extensive training, and court buildings and other related infrastructure was constructed or renovated.



This approach was initially quite successful, explained Renaud Galant, director of RCN Justice and Democracy, a Belgian NGO. His organisation implemented the Ituri reform programme from 2003 to 2006.



Today, judges are paid higher salaries by the government, but they are no longer new to Ituri and thus not insulated from local events or politics, Galant said.



“The corruption is still there, it’s just more expensive to bribe a judge,” he told IWPR.



Innocent Mayembe, the presiding judge at the military tribunal in Bunia, thinks that there needs to be another intensive training programme for judges in Ituri.



“Judges’ ethics are very important and that’s been an aspect that has been neglected,” he said.



Mayembe concedes, however, that there have been some very successful trials in Bunia, especially during the first phase of reforms.



This includes the case of Chief Mandro Panga Kawa, a former member of the militia of Thomas Lubanga, currently on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.



Kawa, who split off from Lubanga to form his own group, was charged with crimes against humanity, including the murder of 14 people in the 2002 Zumbe village massacre.



Mayembe, who has just been appointed to the military tribunal in Kisangani, presided over the 2006 trial in Bunia and sentenced Kawa to 20 years in prison.



“The whole population saw it was possible to bring a bad guy [to court] and have him convicted,” Galant said. He added that “[Mayembe] was a very brave judge” because at the time it was still very risky to arrest local warlords and bring them to trial.



But the Kawa case also illustrates the difficulties of trying to reform one region in when the national judicial system is flawed.



While Kawa was found guilty in Bunia, the verdict was overturned at the military court in Kisangani in February 2008. The appeal judges claimed his crimes were covered by a 2005 amnesty law, even though that law specifically excludes crimes against humanity and war crimes.



Mayembe said that, despite the appeals verdict, Kawa’s guilt was “not contestable.”



“It is necessary that Congolese judges are totally free not only from corruption but also psychological constraints, like fear and political pressure,” he said.



Galant believes that the outcome of Kawa’s appeal shows that much remains to done before high-profile war criminals can be tried in the region.



“I would say that even [though] some judges dared to [bring Kawa to court], they didn’t receive strong support from higher-ranking judges,” he said.



Mayembe, however, pointed out that the high military court has thrown out Kawa’s appeals verdict, and the case is being sent back to Kisangani for review.



Despite all the challenges involved, many observers say that sustainable reform is still possible, but that the investigative capacity of police and prosecutors needs to be improved.



“If you don’t have a good investigation, you don’t have a good trial,” Galant said.



MONUC is working to create “prosecution support cells”, which would partner experienced international investigators with their counterparts in the DRC, according to Harriet Solloway, head of the Rule of Law Unit.



“These teams would have cars, sleeping bags, computers, boots, tents – everything necessary to do investigations where they need to be done,” Solloway said.



While it remains to be seen whether these ideas will make any difference in Ituri and other provinces, experts emphasise that the Congolese government and the international community must not give up on strengthening the domestic judicial system.



“They won’t judge everyone at the ICC [International Criminal Court], so there is a strong need to support the Congolese [so they can] judge the remaining [suspects],” Galant said.



Solloway believes that with the right kind of support, the Congolese judiciary would be able to try high-level war criminals.



“With enough international support, they could do it,” she said. “I would like you to ask me that same question in a year’s time.”



Although the ICC has so far given no indication that it expects Ituri to one day be able to try such cases, some observers have suggested that Lubanga could have been dealt with by local courts in the Ituri province, where he is originally from.



Lubanga is charged with recruiting, conscripting and using child soldiers to fight in the military wing of his group, the Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC, between 2002 and 2003.



“I think there were great hopes that [the Lubanga case] would be tried in local courts,” said Phil Clark, a political scientist at Oxford University who has conducted extensive field work in the region. “What we’re seeing now is a much more robust system in Ituri, which I think really bucks the trend in Congo.”



But Mayembe has his doubts.



“Lubanga could have been judged here, that’s for sure, but the question is: could we have gathered enough evidence to prove his guilt?” he said.



He added that a Lubanga investigation and trial in Bunia would have brought up other complicated and unresolved issues, such as how to protect frightened witnesses.



“To investigate Lubanga, you have to be able to access witnesses and victims, but in Ituri, witnesses fear retaliation,” Mayembe said. “So you understand a Lubanga investigation wouldn’t have been that easy.”



Under the terms of the Rome Statute, which set up the ICC, the court should only undertake legal proceedings in those cases where the national jurisdictions are unable or unwilling to take action.



Rachel Irwin and Melanie Gouby are IWPR reporters in The Hague.