Karim Kahn during opening statement Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman trial. Photo: International Criminal Court (ICC).
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has previously been criticized for a lack of actively charging gender-based violence like rape. The courts hearing last Tuesday of a crucial witness regarding sexual and gender-based crimes in Sudan case, however, marks a change in the ICC’s stance regarding the prosecution of these types of crimes.
The Sudan case concerns the conflict in the Darfur region. In 2003 former president Omar al-Bashir armed Arab militia groups known as the Janjaweed in response to revolts against his government by rebels. According to the UN Commission of Inquiry in Darfur most attacks by government forces were, however, “deliberately and indiscriminately directed against civilians.”
The case currently before the ICC regarding the Darfur situation is that of Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman. Accused of being the senior commander of the Janjaweed, Abd-Al-Rahman is facing 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Prosecutor Karim Kahn, places special emphasis on the sexual and gender-based violence allegedly perpetrated by Abd-Al-Rahman in his opening of the trial. He states that rape “is deliberately inflicted as parts of the attacks against the civilian population.” He goes on to mention the particular importance of last Tuesday’s witness testimony.
This emphasis on sexual and gender-based crimes and their prosecution, however, has not always been present in previous cases brought before the ICC. One example is that of the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo, specifically the trial against the former president of the Union of Congolese Patriots, Thomas Lubanga Dylio.
Lubanga was charged with the enlisting of children under the age of 15 as child soldiers during the Ituri conflict. Despite the documentation of sexual violence related to this case, Lubanga was never charged with any sexual and gender-based crimes.
Redress, an NGO that promotes victim’s rights in cases of human rights violations, wrote a report on child soldier cases at the ICC. In that report Mariana Goetz emphasized that in the DRC case “one of the worst aspects of child soldiering is the use of girls, abducted by force, systematically raped and enslaved – yet the charges include no crimes of sexual violence.”
Furthermore, Redress criticized the prosecution’s charging policy, stating that it was “overly narrow” leading to the judges being unable to connect the sexual violence to the former union leader.
In 2015 then Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, however, launched a special policy on gender-based crimes, indicating a growing awareness of the criticized lack of active charging of gender-based crimes. The policy is meant to increase the prosecutor’s office ability to investigate and prosecute sexual and gender-based crimes.
At the event marking the launch, Bensouda denounced the “culture of impunity” surrounding sexual and gender-based crimes. “The victims of such devastating crimes will not find solace in our words and promises, but in what we manage to deliver in concrete terms,” she added.
Building upon the policy by his predecessor, current prosecutor Karim Kahn recently released a public consultation on a policy to increase the accountability for gender persecution.
Special Adviser to the Prosecutor on Gender Persecution, Lisa Davis, who helped to create the policy, states that: “the new policy intends to contribute to the systematization and development of innovative approaches in the investigation and prosecution of these heinous crimes.”
Kahn’s advocacy for justice for sexual and gender-based crime victims, bleeds through in his opening for the current Abd-Al-Rahman case. In the opening statement of the trial in the Sudan case, the ICC prosecutor states: “We will do our best efforts to highlight cases of sexual gender-based crimes to the best of our ability.”
To emphasize the life-long consequences of these crimes Kahn quotes the afore mentioned witness in particular, who affirmed that “in my community, a girl who has been raped has no value.”
During the cross examination of the witness on the 8th of November, the prosecution delivered on their promise to highlight the long term repercussions of sexual abuse. By asking about how the witness currently deals with the memories of the trauma of sexual violence, the prosecution elicited a response that casts a spotlight on the importance of pursuing accountability for these types of crimes: “When children scream, I still can’t tolerate that” the witness stated.
