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The ICC at The Hague in The Netherlands
Should Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army be captured alive and brought to justice, his actions may be reviewed and his fate decided by a judge from Costa Rica. Elizabeth Odio Benito, our former Vice-President, is currently sitting in the International Criminal Court (ICC), and her wisdom in the sentencing against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo has established a precedent that could be applied to Kony.
On March 14th, 2012, the ICC issued a ruling and sentence in the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a warlord who founded a number of paramilitary groups in the turbulent Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa in the early part of the 21st century. Within two years of the rebel militias operating in the Congo, United Nations observers brought serious accusations against them for their role in massacres, rapes, and tortures.
Another charge lodged against Lubanga Dyilo dealt with the conscription and forced recruitment of African children into his militias. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is very clear in this regard:
Article 8: War crimes
1. The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.
(xxvi) Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities.
According to an opinion piece in online newspaper Ticovision, Judge Odio Benito was not part of the consensus that the ICC had reached regarding the charges against Lubanga Dyilo not applying to sexual violence. She maintained that isolating sexual abuse from the recruitment of child soldiers would be akin to leaving victims, particularly young girls, without protection from the court.
The work of Judge Odio Benito has been lauded by organizations like Human Rights Watch. Director Géraldine Mattioli-Zeltner has stated that the ICC is now a powerful reminded to war criminals who, like Lubanga and Kony, engage in the ghastly practice of conscripting child soldiers and selling them into sexual slavery to fund paramilitary operations.
The indictment against Kony for his war crimes and human rights violations and the social media phenomenon behind it has been discussed in a previous article published by The Costa Rica Star. Joseph Kony is still at large.
