21st SESSION OF THE ASSEMBLY OF STATES PARTIES
5 December 2022
Name of the Event: Realising Reparative Justice for Victims of International Crime: impact, results, reflections, and what States Parties can do (more) (co-hosted by Finland, Sweden, and the Trust Fund for Victims)
Report by: Henry Smith and Paul Weber, Research Associates, PILPG-NL
Highlights:
The event highlighted the important role of reparations in achieving justice.
The work of the Trust Fund for Victims improves the perception of victims that justice is in fact delivered, actively improving the situation they find themselves in.
Panelists repeatedly pointed to the need to involve the perspective of victims in designing such measures and the need for equipping the Trust Fund for Victims with sufficient means to fulfill its role.
Contributions showed widespread sensibility vis-à-vis the special needs of particularly vulnerable groups (children and victims of SGBV) and that the approach to restorative justice taken by the Court and the TFV tries to incorporate age, gender, socio-economic, cultural, and historic sensitive elements.
Speakers:
Chair: Franziska Eckelmans, Acting Executive Director of the TFV
Ibrahim Sorie Yillah, Vice-Chair and Reparations Focal Point of the Board of Directors of the TFV
Piotr Hofmański, President of the International Criminal Court
Anu Saarela, Ambassador of Finland to Israel
Beth van Schaack, United States Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice
Andres Parmas, Member of Board of Directors (2nd reparations focal point)
Paolina Massidda, Principle Counsel at the Office of Public Counsel for Victims
Summary of the Event:
Mr. Ibrahim Sorie Yillah, Vice-Chair and Reparations Focal Point of the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV) opened the ASP side event by highlighting the essential role of the TFV in providing effective reparations for victims of international crimes. The TFV is funded by voluntary donations from public donors, such as party and non-party states to the Rome Statute, as well as private donors, and it provides resources for reparations beyond the assets of the prosecuted or convicted person. No convicted persons have yet contributed to a single reparation payment until now, which highlights the importance of voluntary donations. Mr. Yilliah highlighted the need for more financial but also moral support from both States Parties and non-states parties.
The President of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr. Piotr Hofmanski, presented on the judicial part of reparative justice. He noted that the ICC’s role in reparative justice includes enabling the involvement of victims with the procedures of the Court, ordering reparations on the basis of the particularities of the crimes, and providing a wider comprehensive system of reparative justice through which states can contribute to reparations. Mr. Hofmanski stated that victim participation in proceedings is essential to avoid further victimization and harm, giving special regard to victims of sexual and gender based violence and other vulnerable victims, as well as acknowledging cultural and language particularities. The Rome Statute allows victims to participate in the early stages of proceedings, before the pre-trial chambers. The President highlighted the ongoing reparation proceedings in the Ntaganda and the Ongwen cases, and that despite the slow progress, the TFV has already implemented assistance mandate programs in, for instance, the Central African Republic, providing victims with health services, psychological rehabilitation, and economic support.
The Finnish Deputy Ambassador for Tel Aviv, Annu Saarela, offered reflections from the perspective of a donor state. She noted the key role of reparations in international justice, upholding the right of victims to be supported and their right to live dignified lives. The Deputy Ambassador held that without reparative justice, international criminal justice would be reduced to empty judgements. The work of the ICC relies on the TFV and its funding to deliver justice. She strengthened Finland’s stance as a longstanding supporter of the TFV, and reaffirmed its continued belief that the assistance mandate programs are important even as trials are still ongoing. Ms. Saarela reinforced Finland’s continued support to the TFV in awarding reparations to former child soldiers in the Lubanga case, stating that she witnessed in person how much the assistance programs actually benefit the victims. She concluded by holding that the TFV cannot be the only source and provider of assistance to victims, but that the essential expertise it has gathered through the years can be used by other supporters.
Beth van Schaack, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, highlighted the importance of involving victims and survivors in the design and administration of reparative justice. She presented the alienation of victims with the legal systems, the risk of retraumatization, and the lack of felt justice as the main challenges to achieving reparative justice. Reporting from her own experience, she shared that in one case she witnessed, the victims expressed joy at the successful administration of justice in the criminal case. However, dejected they remarked that ‘you can’t eat the verdict’, with regard to the poverty to which they were due to return. In this vein, the ambassador underlined the importance of giving victims a platform, to empower them, and aid them in their recovery, including ensuring their economic security. In referring back to the domestic experience of the United States, Ambassador van Schaack reflected that any effective reparation requires responding to the experience of the victims and to avoid the reproduction of power relations that were part of the original violations suffered. To her, the discussion on reparations emphasizes that victims and survivors are also right-holders and underlines the important role of reparations in restorative justice by helping communities to move on and healing the social tissue surrounding victims. She recalled that the Rome Statute promises ‘tangible remedies’. According to Ambassador van Schaack, the TFV, by awarding reparations, plays a crucial role in keeping this promise. To her, the case of Uganda and the crimes committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) showed what stamina reparative justice must have. There, even years after the LRA had left the area, the detrimental effects of the crimes committed left local communities in need. She finished her contribution announcing that US citizens would soon be able to make tax-deductible donations to the TFV, which she hoped would add to existing efforts to furnish the TFV with adequate funds.
Andres Parmas, member of the Board of Directors of the TFV, took the floor once more highlighting the crucial role the TFV plays in the Court’s efforts in administering justice. He called the TFVs work ‘revolutionary’, as it allows to address the harms suffered in a meaningful way. Without reparations the Court’s promise of justice would be an empty one.
Paolina Massidda, Principle Counsel at the Office of Public Counsel for Victims, as the representative of victims in pending cases, showcased the victims’ perspective through a video of a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo, reporting on his experience with the TFV. The former child soldier, who remained anonymous, recounted how he was first approached about the availability of reparations in 2015, eventually being integrated into the reparations program in 2021. As a result, he was able to feed his children and send them to school, himself receiving training that made it possible for him to be employed as a cook in a local hotel. Nevertheless, despite his very positive report, he pointed out that few of his fellow ex-child soldiers received the same support. In the backdrop of this video contribution, Ms. Massidda pointed out that the term ‘to repair’ is not representative of the full effect of reparative justice. In her view, the TFV’s reparation efforts allow victims to continue their lives and can help them ‘turn the page’, having a tremendous impact on their lives. However, in order for these effects to be realized, she emphasized that interventions have to be sensitive to the individual situation of each victim in terms of their age, gender, societal, and community background among other individual factors. Given the often slow pace of justice, also the fact that victims’ situations might substantially change over time needs to be taken into account. In this sense, Ms. Massidda requested that the Court face the complexity of reparations with flexibility.
Two researchers from the University of Edinburgh followed Ms. Massidda and presented preliminary results of a review study on a reparation program implemented pursuant to the 2017 reparations order in the Katanga case. The order recognized 297 victims and provided for education and housing assistance, income-generating activities, and psychosocial support. Though still preliminary, the results showed that victims largely felt they had been heard throughout the reparation process and felt that reparation had been achieved.
However, the researchers’ results also suggested the important role of contextual factors. One participant in a focus group of the study reported that “there will be no full reparation until there is peace”. While reparations are one key element of restorative justice, they may not be able to offset the continued suffering of victims who continue to live in violent environments. Furthermore, victims often live close to their offenders or those associated with them and reportedly regularly have the sentiment that not all perpetrators were prosecuted, according to the researchers. While their final report is yet to be published, the initial results presented thus suggested faint optimism while underlining the interconnectedness of justice, reparations, and peace.
The event ended skipping the discussion round for a lack of time with closing remarks by the chair Ms. Eckelmans. Summarizing the debate, she pointed to the need to manage victims’ expectations throughout all stages of proceedings in light of the many challenges. While the global justice community has had a small impact on the creation of peace, Ms. Eckelmans called for continued joint messaging that impunity will not be tolerated. She finished her concluding remarks with a call for greater inclusion of victims in the processes at the Court. In her view, the event showed the many positive effects that victims becoming agents of reparation themselves can have.