By Kylie M Tsudama

Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

GOMA, DR Congo – On Friday the world celebrated International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers.  Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) to release all children recruited as soldiers, especially females.

Both the national army and the rebels are recruiting child soldiers.  Young females are especially at risk of being recruited as sex slaves and are therefore less likely to be released.

“Used as combatants, labor and sex slaves, victims of months-long violence and rape, girls are all too rarely freed by the armed forces and groups,” said UNICEF.

Forced child recruitment and re-recruitment is continuous in eastern DR Congo.

Only twenty percent of those children that have been freed to UNICEF were girls.  UNICEF has recognized that a bigger effort needs to be made in order to release more girls who deserve to live like a child and go to school and reunite with their families.

“The place for children, whether boys or girls, is within the family, not in a military environment,” said Pierrette Vu Thi, a UNICEF representative in DR Congo.  “All the children forcedly recruited in armed forces and groups, and especially young girls, are traumatized by their experience and need special attention.  It is vital that they return to a child’s life as quickly as possible.”

UNICEF Eminent Advocate for Children, Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, said that almost 250,000 children are serving in armed conflicts around the world.

“Oblivious to danger in the face of death, easily impressionable and vulnerable, children are expendable pawns in a deadly game orchestrated by adults,” said Teresa.

UNICEF is taking all necessary measures to end child recruitment in DR Congo.  The Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program (DDR) was launched in 2004.  Since then, more than 36,000 children have been recovered from armed forces and groups.  Of the 6,000 children that were freed in 2000, only 1,222 of them were girls.

Along with MONUC (United Nations Mission in DR Congo), Save the Children, COOPI (Cooperazione Internazionale), and other NGOs, UNICEF is advocating for the release of as many child soldiers as possible, paying special attention to the release of young girls.

On January 10, 2009, the DR Congo government adopted a law that punishes those who recruit children with a twenty year prison sentence.  While many children remain in armed forces and groups, this law is an important step in moving away from the use of child soldiers.

For more information, please see:

All Africa – Girls Less Likely Than Boys to Be Freed From Ranks of Child Soldiers – UN – 12 February 2010

Examiner – International Day Against (Recruiting) and Use of Child Soldiers Today – 12 February 2010

Relief Web – Forced Recruitment of Child Soldiers in DRC: Where Are the Girls? – 12 February 2010

UN News Centre – Girls Less Likely Than Boys to Be Freed From Ranks of Child Soldiers – 12 February 2010

By Kylie M Tsudama

Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

ARUSHA, Tanzania – Colonel Tharcisse Muvunyi has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for inciting genocide.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Appeals Chamber sentenced the former military officer on Thursday.  Trial Chamber III of the ICTR is made up of Judges Dennis C.M. Byron, Gberdao Gustave Kam, and Vagn Joensen.  They found Muvunyi guilty of direct and public incitement to commit genocide after he gave a speech in May 1994 at the Gikore trading center.

“This message was very clear to us.  We understood it to mean that all Hutus who had Tutsi spouses should surrender them to be killed if not they all lose their lives,” said a witness.

The ICTR, a UN-backed tribunal trying suspects in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, previously handed down a guilty verdict with a 25-year sentence in 2006.  In 2008, the ICTR Appeals Chamber set aside the convictions and ordered a new trial.

“The chamber unanimously sentences Tharcisse Muvunyi to 15 years imprisonment,” Judge Byron said.  “There is no reasonable doubt that in giving such a speech Muvunyi intended to incite the audience to commit acts of genocide.”

Muvunyi was arrested in February 2000 and will be given credit for the time he has already served.  Until he is transferred to the State to serve the remainder of his sentence, he will be kept in the ICTR’s custody.

According to Muvunyi’s lawyer, William Taylor, he was not “prosecuted but persecuted.”

The ICTR is based in Arusha, Tanzania and has convicted forty-one suspects and acquitted eight.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Ex-Rwandan Officer Gets 15 Years for Inciting Genocide – 11 February 2010

All Africa – ICTR Sentences Col. Muvunyi to 15 Years for Genocide – 12 February 2010

Human Rights Education Associates – Former Rwandan Soldier Sentenced to 15 Years for Genocide – 12 February 2010

Relief Web – Rwanda: Muvunyi Sentenced to 15 Years After Retrial – 11 February 2010

By Jennifer M. Haralambides
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – On Saturday the Ivory Coast opposition declared it will no longer support Laurent Gbagbo as president because he dissolved the government and electoral commission.

A spokeswoman for the opposition said the dissolution of the government on Friday night is the first step towards dictatorship which cannot be allowed to establish itself.

Neutral parties have also condemned the government dissolution.  “It runs in the fact of all the peace accords we’ve signed since 2004 . . . that today the president thinks he has the power to do this gives the impression that we’ve gone back twenty years into the past. ” said party secretary general Francois Kouablan.

Because of the oppositions refusal to support Gbagbo, the anticipated elections will be delayed further.  Gbagbo’s presidential term expired five years ago.  Since then, a date for elections has been set, and then canceled, every year since 2005.

“We want to have the elections as quickly as possible, but first we’re going to have to fix the rolls,”  said FPI election coordinator Martin Sokouri Bohui.

Tensions arose this past week after Gbagbo’s party accused the head of the independent election commission for attempting to add around 500,000 illegitimate voters into the rolls.  Accusations are coming from both sides as the opposition has accused the ruling party of trying to disqualify voters who were not allied with Gbagbo

At least a quarter of the nation’s twenty million people have been disqualified from voting based on the electoral law’s convoluted definition for determining eligibility, stoking the tension.

This anticipated election is aimed at ending the crisis that began with the attempted coup against Gbagbo in September 2002, which left the country split between the rebel-held north, which is mainly Muslim, and the government controlled south, which is mainly Christian.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Ivory Coast President Dissolves Government – 13 February 2010

AP – Ivory Coast Opposition Won’t Support President – 13 February 2010

VOA – Ivory Coast President Dissolves Government – 13 February 2010

Reuters – Ivory Coast’s President Dissolves Government – 12 February 2010

By Jonathan Ambaye
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa Desk

THE HAGUE, Netherlands-This past week saw special court prosecutors’ cross-examination of Charles Taylor come to a conclusion. Prosecutors addressed a number of issues including Taylor’s claims that there was a conspiracy against him that brought him to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.  Lead prosecutor Brenda Hollis said to Taylor, “Throughout your testimony to these judges, you have talked about a supposed conspiracy against you, and you have referred to this whole case as being about, let’s get Taylor.”

Taylor has claimed that the conspiracy was brought about by a collection of institutions including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”) and the European Union. Hollis pointed to the fact that Taylor admitted that the C.I.A worked with Taylor while he was in power in Liberia, contradicting the claim that the United States wanted him out of power as well. Hollis claims that if that was the case, the C.I.A would have been working against the interest of the United States. In response to this assertion, Taylor said, “It could have been, because sometimes intelligence agencies do one thing on one side, and do another thing on the other side. So it could have been.”

In the last day of his cross-examination, Hollis repeated allegations that Taylor’s government repressed independent news reporting. Hollis also repeated allegations that Taylor was behind operations launched by RUF rebels in Sierra Leone that resulted in the capturing of United Nations peacekeepers. Hollis questioned the motives behind Taylor’s attempts to help secure the release of the peacekeepers held hostage over ten years ago.  Taylor again denied these claims. The prosecution subsequently concluded their cross-examination of Taylor and the court adjourned the trial for one week.

For more information please see:

Charles Taylor Trial – As Prosecutors Conclude His Cross-Examination.. .– 5 February 2010

Charles Taylor Trial – Prosecutors Conclude the Cross Examination of Taylor – 6 February 2010

Charles Taylor Trial – Charles Taylor Trial Adjourned For A Week – 8 February 2010

By Jonathan Ambaye
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa Desk

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – On Monday, February 8, 2010 the judges of the International Criminal Court ruled that there is not enough evidence to send Darfur rebel Leader, Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, to trial on charges he commanded an attack on African Union peacekeepers in 2007.
Garda is alleged to have ordered over 1,000 members of the different factions of the Justice and Equality Movement in an attack with a multitude of military weaponry, on the Haskanita base of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) in North Darfur.

 A panel of three judges, in a 103 pg decision, said that prosecution failed to prove Garda, who is the leader of the Darfur United Resistance Front (“URF”) played a role in the killings of 12 soldiers in 2007.  The courts chamber said, “Considered as a whole, the evidence of the prosecution witnesses from AMIS regarding the purported existence of an armed group under the command and control of Mr. Abu Garda in the area of Haskanita at or around the time of the attack is not sufficient to support the prosecution’s allegations.” The chamber further said, “The same evidence appears, rather to point to other individual acting as commanders of rebel armed groups in the area”.  Garda was the first of many individuals to appear before “The Hague based court in connection with the Darfur case.” Garda surrendered himself voluntarily last year to confront the charges he adamantly says he not guilty of.
 The judges based their ruling on the lack of consistency in the prosecutions primary argument. The prosecution’s case rested on testimony by seven witnesses who spoke to two meetings that took place prior to the attacks. The testimony failed to convince the judges that Garda was present saying, “that the cumulative evidence is weak and unreliable due to inconsistencies inherent in them.”

This decision actually marks “the first time in the history of the court that the prosecution failed to move a case past the confirmation of charges hearings on at least one of the counts contained in a summons to appear or an arrest warrant.”
For more information please see:
All Africa – Hague Court Attacks Prosecution Evidence– 9 February 2010

BBC – ICC Rejects Darfur Rebel Charges – 9 February, 2010

Sudan Tribune – Darfur Rebel Leader Cleared of War Crimes Charges – 9 February, 2010