I want to thank Chairman Royce and ranking member Payne for inviting my
organization, Human Rights Watch, to address the Africa Subcommittee about the
important topic we are addressing here today: Combating War Crimes in Africa.
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Leader for the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. I was based in Freetown,
Sierra Leone from 1999 through late 2003 where I researched and reported on
appalling human rights abuses in the sub-region including those in Sierra
Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. In 2002-2003, I took one year off
from Human Rights Watch to work as an investigator with the Office of the
Prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
In the course of my work with Human Rights Watch, I have spoken with hundreds
of victims, witnesses to, and perpetrators of unspeakable war crimes and crimes
against humanity, almost exclusively committed against unarmed civilians.
I recall the heartbreaking story of a mechanical engineer in Freetown who
watched while his six children and only grandchild were lined up against a wall
in January 1999 and executed by a rebel soldier. I recall the look on the face
of a mother as she described fighting to protect the last of her three
daughters from being dragged away by retreating rebel soldiers. Of how a father
was forced at gunpoint to watch as his young daughter was gang raped by rebel
combatants, some of them children; and of a young man who had dreamed of
becoming an accountant who described how rebels hacked off both of his hands
with a rusty axe. I heard numerous testimonies including a father's account of
how near Tongo Field in late 1997, members of government-backed militias lined
up and executed scores of civilians, including his 15 year old son.
In Liberia, the stories were much the same. A 30 thirty-year-old man from
Popalahun described how in September 2001, large numbers of civilians from the
Gbandi ethnic group were found hiding in the forest by Liberian government
soldiers and later burned in a house in nearby Kamatehun. Or how a young mother
from Bondawalahun was forced by a Liberian government soldier to choose between
dying herself or having her infant murdered in front of her.
Over the last l0 years at least eighteen countries in Africa have been consumed
by war, usually internal. . At present there are several active conflicts in
Africa-they are Cote d'Ivoire, the Darfur region of Sudan, Northern Uganda,
Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Despite the body of treaties, laws and conventions aimed at protecting
civilians during times of war, civilians are more and more often the targeted
by both state and non-state actors. The methods they employ include mass
slaughter, the use of terror, ethnic cleansing, and forced migration. Wars on
the Africa continent are increasingly fought by forced recruits, often children
who are ripped away from their families and turned into killers.
To combat war crimes in Africa, two key and indeed related components are
urgently necessary - the first is ensuring accountability for serious human
rights crimes, and the second is implementing preventive strategies to detect,
stop and/or mitigate situations with the potential to develop into systematic
war crimes.
Ensuring accountability for serious human rights crimes: Every civilian victim
who has been brutally mutilated, raped, abducted or murdered has a name, and so
too do the individuals responsible for perpetrating such atrocities. The abuses
were not random incidents; they were most often the result of a deliberate
policy on the part of the highest levels of leadership. And yet very few of
those responsible for widespread and systematic abuses or indeed for
orchestrating policies of abuse are brought to justice. Recent history has
shown that these killers more often than not receive plum ministry positions as
part of peace deals that grant them amnesty or fail to hold them accountable,
and even reward them for their horrific acts. Often such war criminals and the
impunity they receive contribute to future instability.
Human Rights Watch strongly believes that justice is not a moral luxury.
Victims whose lives have been torn apart by violence in Africa have just as
much a right to see justice done than victims of violence anywhere in the
world. The victims of amputation who will struggle without hands everyday of
the rest of their lives; the tens of thousands of people who lost those most
precious to them - very often in the most brutal of ways and often in front of
them - deserve to know that those who designed and implemented such atrocities
are punished for the acts they ordered and/or perpetrated.
Human Rights Watch also believes that accountability for past crimes is central
to combating future war crimes, particularly in Africa, where a culture of
impunity has often prevailed and is too often tolerated by Africans themselves,
and by the international community.
Impunity for atrocities committed in the past sends the message that such
crimes may be tolerated in the future. In post-conflict societies,
accountability for war crimes is essential to laying the foundation for
building respect for the rule of law and human rights. The often-heard argument
that those who insist on accountability for heinous war crimes are the
spoilers, the saboteurs of peace and stability, is illogical and has been
proven wrong all too often.
For example, in a quick bid to end the first brutal Liberian civil war and in
the face of massive crimes committed against civilians, U.N. and West African
leaders agreed to a peace plan that dispensed with justice and rushed an
election that installed warlord Charles Taylor as president in 1997. Not
surprisingly, within a short time, the country was back at war. The six years
of repressive rule by President Charles Taylor that followed and the next war
were characterized by the same egregious abuses against civilians as the
earlier war and further set the country back. Despite this reality, in the
recent peace deal in Liberia, well known war criminals were given high-level
ministry positions within the National Transitional Government of Liberia.
In another example, in Sierra Leone in 1999, the late RUF leader Foday Sankoh,
allegedly responsible for some of the most brutal crimes committed against
civilians, received not only an amnesty for previous violations, but was
rewarded. In exchange for signing the Lomé peace accord he was given control of
the ministry in charge of the nation's vast natural resources. Months later he
went on to attack both the government and United Nations peacekeepers, taking
hundreds hostage.
In the DRC, the recent abuses committed in Bukavu are an example of what
results when past crimes committed by some of the same commanders are tolerated
and go unpunished. In August 2002, Human Rights Watch reported on the massacres
that took place in Kisangani in May 2002 when RCD-Goma soldiers brutally
suppressed an attempted mutiny in their ranks. One of the commanding officers
involved in these war crimes was Brigadier General Laurent Nkunda, who was
never investigated nor charged for his role in these killings. To the contrary,
he was proposed by the RCD-Goma as one of its officers to join the unified
army. This sent the wrong message; that perpetrators of crimes and human rights
abuses would be rewarded with government positions and could continue to commit
atrocities with complete impunity, which he and his forces did in Bukavu in May
and June of this year. As Nkunda's soldiers marched from Goma to Bukavu, they
attacked numerous villages and civilians. In Bukavu, international and local
organizations documented numerous cases of killing and rape, including the
brutal rape by Nkunda's soldiers of at least six cases of children under five.
Impunity or a failure of accountability also characterizes the current
situation of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, in exile in Nigeria.
Despite having commanded troops who perpetrated war crimes in Liberia, Sierra
Leone, Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire, and despite having been indicted by the
Special Court for Sierra Leone on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, Charles Taylor is being shielded from justice by the Nigerian
government. In a deal brokered by the United Nations, the United States and
ECOWAS, Taylor was offered asylum in exchange for leaving Liberia. The U.S. has
failed to take a strong position on the need for Nigeria to hand Charles Taylor
over to the Special Court. In February of this year, Secretary of State Colin
Powell justified such inaction and characterized the issue as "a matter between
him [Taylor] and that tribunal."
This U.S. position is not consistent with U.S. support for the Special Court
for Sierra Leone and indeed the position of this committee which has been clear
on the importance of Taylor being surrendered to the Special Court. In creating
the Special Court, the international community and especially the United
States, its biggest financial backer, made an important commitment to bring
justice for the horrific crimes committed in Sierra Leone. This initiative to
promote justice and respect for the rule of law will be significantly undercut
if Taylor is shielded from the court. The same can be said for the U.S.
commitment to combat war crimes in Africa or anywhere else.
This unsatisfactory state of affairs is unfortunately representative of other
U.S. policy on war crimes in Africa more generally which has often lacked
clarity and constancy. For example, the United States has pursued an aggressive
and proactive policy in favor of arresting genocide suspects and bringing them
to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The US
conditioned support to the former Kabila regime on that regime demonstrating
willingness to arrest genocide suspects hiding in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), on supporting U.N. resolutions calling for the surrender of
Rwandans to the Rwandan tribunal, and on pressuring Great Lakes countries to do
the same. However, the United States has failed to actively confront Rwanda,
Uganda and Burundi - often identified as the source of support of rebel
factions in the DRC. This, added to the US position against the International
Criminal Court, an institution strongly supported in DRC brings into questions
the US's true commitment to bring justice for war crimes in an even-handed
manner.
U.S. pressure for the surrender of indicted war criminals to the ICTR also
stands in sharp contrast to its position on the surrender of indicted war
criminal Charles Taylor to the Special Court for Sierra Leone. This reluctance
to press Nigeria to hand over Taylor fosters a double standard that betrays the
people of Sierra Leone and makes light of all that they have suffered. To
promote justice and combat impunity, the United States must take a stand on the
matter of Taylor's surrender to the Special Court.
The need for US action is particularly urgent given the May 31 historic ruling
by the Special Court rejecting Taylor's claim that he enjoyed immunity from
prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity as a sitting head of
state at the time of his indictment. This landmark ruling affirms the principle
that no one should be above the law for the most serious crimes. It is exactly
this principle that must be enforced in West Africa to promote greater respect
for the rule of law and combat war crimes in Africa.
But Taylor's surrender is also needed for a more practical reason. Human Rights
Watch has received credible information that Charles Taylor's exile in Nigeria
poses a continued risk to stability in West Africa. Sources inside Liberia
report that Taylor remains in frequent contact with members of his former
government and that an insurgency composed of fighters loyal to him, including
combatants from the former Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Anti Terrorist
Unit (ATU), and Special Security Service (SSS) as well as numerous Guinean
dissidents are training in Liberia near the border with Cote d'Ivoire. We
understand this insurgency is being supported by business ventures in which
Taylor holds an interest that is not recorded publicly, and that the
insurgency's activities may include destabilizing Guinea.
Nigeria's continued shielding of Taylor goes against international law, is an
affront to his innumerable victims, and undermines the political and financial
investment by the United States to combat impunity in Africa.
We assume U.S. involvement in the negotiations that led to Taylor leaving power
in Liberia and obtaining asylum in Nigeria were aimed at stopping the bloodshed
of innocent civilians being killed on the streets of Monrovia. We believe it is
now time for the U.S. to intervene on behalf of different victims - those from
Sierra Leone's war - and in so doing to take an unequivocal stand against
impunity in West Africa. If the United States is serious about combating war
crimes in Africa, it must take a stand now. The US must use public and private
diplomacy to call on Nigerian President Obasanjo to surrender Charles Taylor to
the court.
Combating systematic war crimes: l) Control of arms flows 2) Corruption and 3)
Monitoring and Control of Hate Speech Causing Incitement:
1) Control of Arms Flows:
Africa is a sad showcase of the human rights and humanitarian costs of the
uncontrolled proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Quantities of arms
have flowed to the region causing the rampant misuse of such weapons by state
and non-state actors alike. The easy availability of small arms, conflict and
human rights abuses in West Africa are interwoven. The spread and misuse of
small arms helps fuel conflict, and conflict generates a market for more
weapons. These weapons, in the hands of combatants who have a history of
indifference for the principle of civilian immunity, lead to grave violations
against innocent people. Mercenaries and arms traffickers make a tidy profit
off their trades, and the combatants can often count on outside support to
finance their wars. But, it is civilians who ultimately pay the highest price.
The United States can and should take steps to address these troubling trends
including restraining U.S. arms exports to conflict regions, supporting
disarmament measures, and promoting legally binding norms to prevent arms from
being supplied to human rights abusers.
In West Africa, the ECOWAS small arms moratorium and its implementation need to
be strengthened. In our view, the moratorium should be expanded to encompass
all weapons categories, developed into an information-exchange mechanism, and
made binding. These measures are particularly critical for the potentially
disastrous situations in the Cote d'Ivoire, Burundi and the DRC where weapons
coming in and out need to be closely monitored.
The United States also should support monitoring of arms embargoes and
accountability for sanctions-busters, and do so consistently. It should insist
on compliance with arms embargoes by private actors and governments, even those
allied to the U.S., as is the case with Guinea and Rwanda. The work of U.N.
expert panels in Africa has been valuable and their recommendations should be
taken up, which the United States can help ensure in concert with other members
of the U.N. Security Council.
On the issue of mercenaries, militias, and roving fighters, the U.S., through
its presence in West Africa, could help bring the problem under control by
collaborating with relevant bodies to monitor and publicize their activities,
especially with respect to how these rogue elements are armed and financed.
The United States also can exercise leadership on the global agenda to address
some of the fundamental problems that contribute to human rights catastrophes
in West Africa and elsewhere. One key area is the need for global measures to
control the activities of arms brokers. Another is developing, adopting, and
adhering to minimum global standards for arms exports, so that weapons are not
furnished to known abusers. Strict human rights standards also must be upheld
when granting military assistance. U.S. legislation circumscribing such
assistance on human rights grounds offers a useful model that could be promoted
abroad.
2) Corruption:
The second strategy for preventing conflict has to do with issues of good
governance; of corruption. Sierra Leone is a case in point. In many ways, the
jury is still out on whether that country will remain a nation at peace. The
guns are silent, however, the deep rooted issues that gave rise to the
conflict - endemic corruption, weak rule of law, crushing poverty, and the
inequitable distribution of the country's vast natural resources - remain
largely unaddressed by the government and the international community.
Corruption within both the public and private sectors in Sierra Leone remains
endemic and a source of serious human rights abuses. Meanwhile, the state of
the countries schools, hospitals and clinics are in complete disarray and
public service employees often go for weeks without pay. Scandals involving the
misappropriation of public and international donor funds to key ministries
including health and education are common place.
In these countries, the institutions designed to represent and protect
civilians; the government, the police and the military, have instead been the
source of considerable instability, corruption, and human rights violations,
yet they have enjoyed near-complete immunity from prosecution. Today
unemployment is over 70 percent in Sierra Leone, the vast majority of the
population survives on less than a dollar a day. Although some 40,000
combatants have been disarmed, thousands are part of youth organizations that
have maintained their previously held military structures and are angry and
disappointed as their lives have not yet improved.
Angola, where the government has consistently mismanaged its substantial oil
revenues and, despite rhetorical commitments, has yet to demonstrate a
meaningful commitment to reform, provides another striking example. In recent
years, literally billions of dollars in oil revenues have illegally bypassed
the central bank and remain unaccounted for. Such missing revenues reflect a
failure of government accountability more generally and are directly linked to
the Angolan government's continuing failure to foster institutions that uphold
the rule of law and human rights. The sums involved are staggering. From 1997
to 2002, unaccounted for funds amounted to some U.S. $4.22 billion.
Conditions in Sierra Leone and Angola are similar to many countries across the
continent whether coming out of conflict or teetering on the brink of it. The
United States can exert tremendous leverage over the policies of the many
governments in Africa grappling with this insidious problem. The US must adopt
a zero tolerance policy towards corruption and take every opportunity to both
privately and publicly underscore the importance of combating it. In resource
rich countries the US must press governments to publish financial reports so
that a full account of revenues, expenditures, and debt is made public and
transparent. The US must be willing to use its influence to press forcefully
for change.
3) Monitoring and Control of Hate Speech Causing Incitement:
Too often African politicians who should be working to create societies based
on tolerance, equality and the rule of law, have instead openly engaged in the
political exploitation of ethnicity to both eliminate political rivals and, in
time of war, to claim military victory in conflict.
Rwanda is an extreme example. There, a radio station incited fear and hatred
against the Tutsi, and gave specific orders on how to carry out such killings,
including identifying individuals to be attacked and specifying where they
could be found.
Silencing these radio broadcasts would not only have ended this particularly
effective form of incitement and delivery of specific orders; it would have
shown that the international community rejected the legitimacy of the genocidal
message and those who were delivering it. The United States considered jamming
the broadcasts from an airplane, but found the cost - about $8,000 an hour -
too high.
While mindful of balancing the importance of freedom of expression as a core
value of human rights, we believe that any restriction on the content of
expression must address speech that is likely to incite violence,
discrimination or hostility against an individual or clearly defined group of
persons in circumstances in which such violence, discrimination or hostility is
imminent and alternative measures to prevent such conduct are not reasonably
available.
The U.S. must pay close attention to the media in situations of potential
ethnic, religious, or racial conflict and must be willing to use all leverage
to pressure governments to act more responsibly. In this regard, the current
situation in Cote d'Ivoire demands particular attention. In cases of impending
genocide, the US must be prepared to silence broadcasts that incite or provide
directions for violence.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this testimony with you today. On behalf
of so many millions of Africans whose lives have been torn apart by war, I urge
Congress to pressure the U.S. government to do all that it can to provide
accountability for the perpetrators of egregious violations, and act with
vision to adopt preventative strategies to combat future violations and
senseless loss of life.
