20TH SESSION OF THE ASSEMBLY OF STATES PARTIES
8 December 2021
Name of the Event: Trust Fund for Victims: Implementation of Reparation Awards in the DRC and Mali (co-hosted by: Australia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, NL, UK, and the Trust Fund for Victims)
Report by: Claire Kaula, Junior Research Associate PILPG-NL, and Marielotte van Ballegooijen, Research Associate PILPG-NL
Highlights:
The Trust Fund for Victims provides an important role to support the implementation of reparations for victims. The Trust Fund for the Victims cannot do what they do without the support of Donor States
The implementation of reparations in the Katanga, Lubanga, and Ntaganda cases from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are focused on providing physical, psychological, and socio-economic reparations.
The implementation of reparations in Al Mahdi case from Mali include memorialization reparations and are conducted with many consultations and community engagement.
Speakers:
Kevin Kelly; Newly Elected to the Board of Director of the Trust Fund for Victims
Päivi Kaukoranta; Ambassador of Finland to The Netherlands
Franziska Eckelmans; Legal Advisor to the Deputy to the Executive Director at the Trust Fund for Victims
Henk Cor van der Kwast; Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the Conference on Disarmament and Disarmament Ambassador
Matthew Neuhaus; Ambassador of Australia to The Netherlands
Kizita Frogwe; Program Manager at the Trust Fund for Victims in the DRC
Tiade Lorenzo; Program Manager for one of the TFV’s Contracting Parties in DRC
Maman; Program Manager for one of the TFV’s Contracting Parties in Timbuktu
Summary of the Event:
The event began with remarks by Kevin Kelly, a newly elected member of the Board of Directors (hereinafter the Board) of the Trust Fund for Victims (hereinafter the TFV or the Fund), on the importance of the Fund and that both the assistance mandate and the reparations mandate be equally recognized and supported. Kelly said that “the new Board of Directors of the Fund has made an early decision to prioritize [the Fund’s] support for this work on reparations for the year ahead” and plans to take a harm based, victim centered approach to reparative justice.
Päivi Kaukoranta, Ambassador of Finland to The Netherlands, presented Finland’s dedication and support to the Fund since its inception. As announced on Monday, December 6, 2021, during the Channel debate, Finland will be significantly increasing its donations to both the assistance mandate and the reparations mandate with two separate contributions. Ambassador Kaukoranta presented the importance of reparations by saying that Finland continues “to believe that the greatest achievement and innovation of the Rome Statute was to put victims at its heart”.
Following this contribution by Kaukoranta, Henk Cor van der Kwast, Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the Conference on Disarmament and Disarmament Ambassador at large, commended the Board and all people who have worked on providing reparations, and emphasized that reparations are a fundamental part of the Rome statute.
Matthew Neuhaus, Ambassador of Australia to The Netherlands, then remarked that Australia is proud to support the Fund and its work. He also welcomed the new Board member Kevin Kelly.
Franziska Eckelmans, the legal advisor to the Deputy to the Executive Director at the TFV then gave an overview of the process of implementing reparations. The Fund is there to complement the reparation awards, but the convicted person is the one liable. The process can be ordered into three steps. First, a Chamber orders a reparation. Second, the Fund prepares a plan to provide reparations, which is approved by the Board and the Chambers. The approval process takes about a year. Third, reparation partners are contracted, who then begin outreach and intake of beneficiaries. When reparations are fully implemented the reparation program is evaluated by a neutral third-party contracted by the Fund. Throughout this entire process, the Fund is helping to track and support the implementation.
The event followed with an explanation of the implementation of reparations in the Katanga, Lubanga, and Ntaganda cases from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the Al Mahdi case from Mali. In all cases, the reparation implementations are active except the individual reparations in the Katanga case and the symbolic reparations in the Al Mahdi case.
Kizita Frogwe, program manager of one of the TFV’s Contracting Parties in the DRC, presented that all cases from the DRC (Katanga, Lubanga, and Ntaganda) have similar interventions because they are focused on the three rehabilitation perspectives namely, physical, psychological, and socio-economic. Frogwe subsequently gave the floor to project managers and implementing partners to discuss the implementation of repartitions from each case.
In the Lubanga case, Tiade Lorenzo, a program manager to one of the TFV’s Contracting Parties in DRC, discussed different aspects of the implementation of reparations. First, the contact and intake process of the victims takes place. Here, the informed consent of victims and strict adherence to confidentiality is of utmost importance. Second, the areas of intervention are examined. This is done through an evaluation of the victims’ on their physical and mental health. The socio-economic reparations focus on income generation, specifically providing vocational training. Currently the training is focused on small business and agriculture. Third, there are challenges in providing reparations. These are the overall insecurity in the region, and the high mobility of victims which makes it difficult to track and ensure they receive reparations.
In the Ntaganda case, Frogwe provided an update of the process. As ordered by the Trial Chamber, Frogwe and her team developed an urgent implementation plan focused on identifying the victims who had the most urgent needs. This was approved and two partners are currently implementing this plan. The team is also now working on submitting the draft implementation plan mid-December to receive approval from the Trial Chamber. After this, they will begin procurement procedures and implementation.
Following the discussion on the DRC reparation implementations, the event followed with an overview of the Al Mahdi case reparation implementations from Mali.
Maman, the project manager in Timbuktu, presented the memorialization reparation implementation and challenges. To implement the memorialization measure, Maman formed memorialization committees. Each committee is made up of representatives from the neighborhood chosen by the community. The committee discusses whether it is appropriate to memorialize the destruction of mosques and if so how to memorialize it. The challenges they have faced include the resistance of a neighborhood Chief because more mosques had been destroyed that were not included in the ICC charges. It was also a challenge to include women in the committees because generally the community did not believe women ought to make decisions relating to mosques. Other challenges the committees have faced are the insecurity of the region and the poor infrastructure on communication connections. Despite these challenges, the memorialization reparation implementation has been able to move forward with consultations and community engagement.