Opening remarks by Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, Director of the Human Rights Council and Special Procedures Division to the Roundtable on the prevention of genocide in practice - Ideas for cooperation in the Great Lakes Region

26 October 2011
 

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity to address this important roundtable on an issue which has unfortunately greatly affected the Great Lakes region

As a human rights advocate and representative from the OHCHR, I would like to draw your attention on the importance of using a human rights approach in the prevention of genocide. The primary cause of genocide is the de‐humanization of communities that leads to discrimination and violence. Human rights based approach requires participation, accountability, non-discrimination, empowerment and linkages to international standards in the field of human rights and humanitarian law. Systematic and harmful discrimination supported by various forms of incitement to hatred and unlawful action against certain groups lays the ground for their exposure to violence and persecution, and may lead subsequently to mass atrocities.

Prohibited grounds of discrimination are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as in several international human rights instruments. These encompass discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

I believe that effective prevention relies partly on accountability for past violations. The right to reparation and restitution, including justice, should not be treated as a secondary priority. This is indeed true for the Great Lakes Region.

A holistic, fair and transparent justice, including reparations programmes to help redress cases of gross and serious violations of human rights,  are key to bring justice to the victims and contribute to re-establishing essential system of norms, including norms of justice, which were weakened during times of conflict. Justice is also essential for a genuine reconciliation among ethnic communities and building the way towards the development of one of the richest and most beautiful regions of the world, based on the principles of equality, rule of law and tolerance. This also implies identifying and prosecuting those individuals that bear the greatest degree of responsibility for the crimes committed. Thus allowing communities to move away from collective demonization and collective reprisals and to build the grounds for genuine and long lasting reconciliation.

Both UN special advisers for the prevention of genocide, Juan Mendez and Francis Deng, have stressed the importance of strengthening regional networks of countries willing to develop regional and international mechanisms to prevent genocide. Regional initiatives are of particular importance because at regional level states have common concerns and learn more easily from each other what kind of solutions and best practices work for them.
 
This is particularly true for the Great Lakes region, a region that has witnessed some of the world’s deadliest conflicts in the last 20 years, with in particular the Rwanda genocide, the Burundi civil war, the longstanding conflicts in the DRC and the endless trail of unspeakable violence left by the Lord Resistance Army (LRA).

Ambassador Mulamula talked about the context which led to the setting up of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), in particular, the Rwandan genocide and the DRC conflicts. This relatively new regional inter-governmental body was established on the recognition that political instability and conflicts in these countries have a considerable regional dimension and thus require a concerted effort in order to promote sustainable peace and development.
The ICGLR Regional Committee on the Prevention of Genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and all forms of discrimination provides a unique legal and political framework for the prevention of genocide in the region. It is impressive to note that the Great Lakes Region was the first region in the world to work collectively on the prevention of genocide. And it is particularly encouraging to note that the Regional Committee set up for this purpose started functioning and a national committee for the prevention of genocide has been set up in Rwanda.                                                                               
OHCHR is committed to assist the ICGLR in its important endeavour on the prevention of Genocide and our regional Human Rights Adviser to the ICGLR has been particularly instrumental for that purpose.
OHCHR has also other important presences in the region, including the United Nations Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Central Africa based in Yaoundé, the human rights components within the peace missions of DRC, Burundi, CAR, and Sudan and our HRAs in Chad, Kenya and Rwanda. OHCHR is also ready to assist the Regional Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Lusaka (Zambia). These presences, who also have a monitoring and reporting mandate, can act as an early warning mechanism in the face of deteriorating human rights conditions and assist States to fulfil their responsibility to protect, through long-term measures such as institution-building and technical cooperation, designed to promote respect for human rights, to prevent and address human rights violations, and to fight impunity. This is particularly true during electorial periods and it is important to note that election observation is included in the mandate of the ICGLR Secretariat.
Other human rights mechanisms can also play an important role: the UN’s independent human rights experts, known as the Special Procedures, carry out country visits and raise awareness to deteriorating human rights situations, the Treaty Bodies which mandate States’ compliance with their international human rights obligations, the Human Rights Council which provides the highest-profile intergovernmental forum where human rights concerns are debated and finally the Universal Periodic Review which review each member state’s human rights record every four years,  are all important tools to identify situations that may lead to genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, the prevention and the repression of the crime of genocide is now more and more incorporated in national laws as well as within the Constitution. Tanzania is an example. No doubt that in addition to initiatives at national level, a regional court would better help streamlining resources and ensuring more effective monitoring, prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide and of mass atrocities.

Going back to the issue of accountability for past violations as a means to prevent genocide, last year, OHCHR undertook a huge endeavour in DRC known as the Mapping Report which provides the most extensive account to date of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed in the DRC between 1993 and 2003. The report which was released on 1st October 2010 assesses what areas of international law may have been violated, as the most serious crimes committed against a civilian population may not only be crimes under national laws, but also under international law. The report notes that the vast majority of the 617 serious incidents it describes, point to the commission of multiple violations of human rights and/or international humanitarian law, which may constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes, and often both at the same time. In some cases, it even invokes the possibility that genocidal acts may have been committed.  However, the report stresses that these questions can only be addressed by a competent court. The aim of the Mapping Report was to encourage efforts to break the cycle of impunity and continuing gross violations, by showing the scale and seriousness of the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed in the DRC.

The situation in the DRC is emblematic of the terrible price paid by women and girls during conflicts. Violence in the DRC was accompanied by the systematic use of rape and sexual assault by all combatant forces. The scale and gravity of sexual violence were primarily the result of the victims’ lack of access to justice and protection and the impunity that had reigned in recent decades. The high prevalence of sexual violence during and after the different conflicts  calls for transitional justice mechanisms to be established that take into account this issue, the needs of the victims and of their communities, and the need to rebuild a society in which women are stakeholders, and in which the traditional political and structural inequalities are corrected.
The report made also a series of recommendations to enable the provision of truth, justice, reparation and reform for millions of victims of human rights violations.

There is also a need for further regional follow up to the DRC Mapping Report, including engaging with the regional authorities especially in Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Burundi and Zimbabwe. If followed by strong regional and international action, the mapping report could make a major contribution to ending the cycle of impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Most facets of a transitional justice and accountability response for DRC entail an element of engagement with the region. The follow-up to the mapping report should therefore build on existing initiatives and efforts to address impunity for gross human rights violations in the region committed by a high number of state and non-state actors and lessons learned from current difficulities in ensuring effective and long lasting disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR), including of child soldiers.

The existing regional fora such as the Great Lakes Genocide Prevention mechanism, established under the International Conference on the Great Lakes region (ICGLR), provide opportunities for such engagement and collaboration. Indeed, forgetting the past is risking seeing its repetition. Drawing lessons from the past and using it as a constant reminder of what must be avoided at all cost is, on the contrary, an effective way of preventing the worst from happening again.

Preventing genocide is the responsibility of not just the Government, but each and every individual within our societies, regions and countries. Nonetheless, the responsibility to protect its citizens against these mass atrocities, clearly established by international law, lies with the Government. This prevention should start with the public recognition of past atrocities to help victims in their grievance process and restore their dignity, the establishment of the historical truth and constant advocacy of the need to prevent further unfolding of tragedy.

The Great Lakes has the necessary legal tools to take action for the prevention of genocide, notably though the full implementation of the Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region and its protocols, in particular the Protocol on the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity and all forms of Discrimination and the Protocol on the Prevention and Suppression of Sexual Violence Against Women and Children. We have now to ensure a sustained political will from all the Governments of the region to work together for a better future.