International Criminal Court conference

It is cool being in Kampala near the time of the review conference for the International Criminal Court, though! But at the same time, I wouldn’t have known it was going on unless I had read about it back in the US. I think that is not really a good sign, but it is definitely a step in the right direction anyway! I am going to try to go to a public event, like maybe a screening of the film “The Reckoning” which is about the establishment, etc of the ICC, although I don’t think there is much the general public can do without being accredited ahead of time.

But I had an awesome conversation with the woman next to me on the airplane, who was going to present a paper on transitional justice at the conference. She was from Afghanistan and works for the country’s National Human Rights Commission. She said she mostly likes to set up conferences and meetings where victims around the country get together and work toward reconciliation and justice. I told her a little bit about Rwanda’s gacaca courts, which is the community-based justice system used after the genocide; she thought they were really interesting and I felt like maybe I contributed a little to reconciliation in Afghanistan (OK, not really, but you never know!!). She talked pretty openly about how hard forgiveness and reconciliation is in Afghanistan, especially because often the victims and perpetrators come from different ethnic groups and that are usually in different locations around the country. Or the perpetrator is the Taliban, or even international forces, and the victims are completely innocent people.

I asked her what the victims or people in general feel about the ICC, and her response was really interesting and I think was one that is probably the case in many countries around the world. The victims want justice, or at the very least they want the truth, and so they want the perpetrators to go on trial. But many people don’t actually understand what the ICC can and cannot do. Right now, the woman said the ICC is doing a preliminary investigation in Afghanistan. But it definitely does not have jurisdiction over anything that happened before 2003, when Afghanistan became a member. Maybe some more education programs or other ways to spread knowledge about the court would be useful?

I hope I get to experience some of the conference! I did drive by the national soccer stadium, where the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, and the Ugandan president Musseveni were playing a game of soccer to commemorate the beginning of the conference! sadly, I couldn't stop to see it:(