Why ICC has lost victims’ support

Last week, the blog The Hague Trials Kenya published an article about the situation of a family under the International Criminal Court’s witness protection programme.

The piece titled “Desperation drives Kenyan in ICC protection to threaten hunger strike” tells of a registered victim who, after being threatened as a suspected ICC witness, contacted the court and, with his wife and children, was relocated to the DRC.

The children were in school or college and the ICC promised to move them to another country where they could finish their studies. A year later, the family remains in the DRC, their immigration status and future destination unclear.

Out of school and work and unable to fully communicate with their French-speaking neighbours, the family members sit at home, contemplating their uncertain future.

In protest of this desperate situation, the man’s son threatened to go on a hunger strike. This seems to have jolted the ICC, which contacted the family and requested that the strike be put on hold.

I retell this story because, while much has been said about the cost of being an ICC witness, relatively little attention has been given to the plight of hundreds of registered victims under the court’s programme.

Some have become outcasts or faced threats, others even killed. The threats seem to stem from a sense that the victims are traitors to their communities and elected leaders and cannot be trusted.

Mistrust is sometimes linked to a belief that the victims are — or might become — witnesses, or that they might share information about lower-level perpetrators, during any future legal proceedings.

Many registered victims have become known (at least in part) through periodic meetings with the ICC’s Victims and Witnesses Unit and with local human rights organisations that sometimes gather them to collect views, disseminate information and display victims’ support for the court.

The latter is an important way of trying to legitimise the ICC cases and to counter opposing narratives that they are biased and a threat to Kenya’s sovereignty, peace and stability.

RELIANT ON LIMITED

However, such visibility has sometimes prompted threats, which, in some instances, have led the ICC to move victims to other parts of Kenya or to other countries.

However, once the court has moved victims, people become convinced that they are witnesses. This, as in the case of the family discussed above, can lead to a stark choice — returning home (to more threats or worse) or remaining reliant on limited support far away from friends and family.

In the meantime, lives are wasted and optimism turns to pessimism. As the son writes in his “Notice for Hunger Strike” sent to the ICC, his youngest sister “had a dream to become a journalist but she has lost hope… She cries daily that she can no longer go to school due to lack of funds and blames the ICC for denying her rights to education. She contemplates early marriage or even suicide”.

The outcome is a situation where some victims continue to suffer and undergo new injustices. In this context, many registered victims have become increasingly critical of the court.

This is compounded by the withdrawal of charges in the Kenyatta case, the falling off of witnesses in the Ruto-Sang case and the election of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto as President and Deputy President, respectively, which has made many to lose hope in the process. This includes the possibility of compensation through the Victims Trust Fund, which requires that the accused be found guilty.

As a result, the court has lost some of its most ardent supporters. For example, in June 2013, 93 victims withdrew, saying the prosecutor was “using us as stepping stones” and that they were “no longer confident that the process…is beneficial to our interests”.

Similarly, in January 2014, I spoke with a registered victim, who said he could have agreed to be a witness but was no longer considering it due to “the suffering of victims”.

“I’ve received threats and no one listens. I’ve come to think that it’s better that (the cases) end and (we) move on without hoping for assistance (from the ICC),” he explained.

In short, the court has important lessons to learn from its intervention in Kenya, about the treatment of witnesses and victims.

Gabrielle Lynch is an associate professor of comparative politics at University of Warwick, UK. ([email protected]; @GabrielleLynch6)