Global Policy Forum

By Chris McGreal

It is eight years this week since Rwanda was engulfed by genocide. Prosecutors at the international court trying Hutu extremists who started the slaughter planned to mark the anniversary by laying bare the political conspiracy behind it. They wanted to use the trial of Theoneste Bagosora, the army colonel who is the alleged mastermind behind the murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis over 100 days, to blow away myths about the killing and draw attention to one of the 20th century's last great crimes. But, after fleetingly opening Bagosora's trial last week, the judges postponed it for six months - for the want of a translation of two simple documents.

It was a fitting letdown for a tribunal that has vainly raised so many expectations and become a potent argument for and against the international criminal court, which is expected to be ratified tomorrow. Some say Rwanda's tribunal - based in Arusha, Tanzania - lays bare why international justice doesn't work. Others claim it is evidence of why a standing court is required. The Rwanda tribunal, like the international court trying Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague, is an ad hoc creation of the UN security council. They share the same chief prosecutor but the Rwandan court has been very much the poor relation. At least twice as many people died in Rwanda as in the former Yugoslavia, but the tribunal trying Bagosora and his cohorts has had neither the Hague's resources nor political clout.

Milosevic was brought to trial within a few months of his arrest in the Balkans. Bagosora has been in custody for six years and Rwandans are still waiting to hear the case against the man who brought them so much misery. Or not. Tellingly, while Belgrade is gripped by Milosevic's performance in the dock, many genocide survivors are indifferent to the fate of Bagosora at the hands of the international court. They have simply lost faith in the ability of the tribunal to deliver justice.

Too many years of delays, incompetence and a perception that the court is soft on the accused have severely undermined the tribunal's standing in the place it was supposed to make its mark - Rwanda. And when the court does catch public attention it is for the wrong reasons, such as the incident late last year when three judges laughed as a woman gave lengthy testimony about being raped. The judges later said they were laughing at the defence lawyer's questions, not the victim. The genocide survivors' confidence in the court is so low that witnesses are now threatening a boycott of the tribunal, which could see its work brought to a halt.

The Rwanda court has had successes. It was the first international tribunal in history to convict anyone of genocide (the charge did not exist at Nuremberg), and it broke new legal ground four years ago when judges - in pronouncing on the guilt of a particularly brutal mayor, Jean-Paul Akayesu - declared for the first time that rape is an act of genocide when a woman is attacked because of her ethnicity. That ruling was picked up by the Yugoslav tribunal and will be important case law for the ICC. The tribunal has also been remarkably successful at laying its hands on the main perpetrators of the genocide, if not actually getting them to trial. Sixty people are in detention, including much of the cabinet that oversaw the slaughter. The then prime minister, Jean Kambanda, was persuaded to plead guilty to genocide. Most of his ministers will probably spend the rest of their lives in jail alongside him.

But justice has been so long in coming - only eight people have been convicted so far - and is so distant for the survivors and Rwandans in general that it is of marginal consequence to many of them. One of the original concepts of the court was that it would play a central role in promoting reconciliation and decent government in Rwanda, by establishing that even the most powerful could not escape justice and by exposing the lies that fuelled the hatreds and fears that make genocide possible.

One of the tribunal's achievements could have been to break the link between the mass murderers and the broad Hutu population, who remain guilty by association in the eyes of Rwanda's Tutsi leaders and the world at large. The majority of Hutus did not participate in genocide or welcome it, but they have been tarred with the same brush because the crimes were committed in their name.

The court has been plagued by difficulties since its inception seven years ago, most notably mismanagement, underfunding, corruption, internal politics and racial tensions between western prosecutors and African tribunal managers. The prosecution was chaotic from the start. The first chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, was focused on Yugoslavia and showed little interest in Rwanda.

Goldstone's successor, Louise Arbour, put most of the cases on hold while she attempted to put together one large Nuremberg-style trial. That would have at least had the advantage of demonstrating the scale of the conspiracy, but the judges would not permit it. Instead, the cases were again delayed as the prosecution grouped defendants for trial according to their area of responsibility, such as the military or media.

Carla del Ponte has sharpened the prosecution and streamlined some of the trials. She has pressed for more judges and is keen to move some of the trials to Kigali to bring them closer to the survivors, and Rwandans in general.

It is probably all too late. The tribunal's opportunity to influence the shaping of post-genocide Rwanda has gone. It is doubtful that the dispensing of international justice on African soil for the first time has persuaded other extremists to moderate their behaviour, though there is some anecdotal evidence from Congo and Burundi that militia leaders have curtailed ethnic attacks.

Instead, the genocide's survivors often find more reasons for bitterness at the tribunal's activities than hope for justice. They resent the fact that Kambanda and Bagosora, in jail, are in better accommodation than many survivors - and that the international court can impose a maximum life sentence, while those who carried out their orders, on trial in Rwandan courts, could face a firing squad.

The tribunal's real impact has been on how international justice will be dispensed from now on in Africa. Four years ago, Pierre-Richard Prosper was the prosecutor who sent Akayesu to prison for life and led to the rape as genocide ruling. Today he is the US war crimes ambassador.

Prosper was instrumental in ensuring that a new "special court" for Sierra Leone - expected to begin work later this year - was not modelled on the Rwanda tribunal. It is another UN ad hoc court, but this one mixes local and foreign judges trying cases under Sierra Leone and international law in the very place the crimes were committed. Even before it opens, the special court has had limits set both on the number of cases it can try and its lifespan - in sharp contrast to the seemingly interminable work of the Rwandan and Yugoslav tribunals.

Prosper frankly admits that Americans would rather not see any more Rwanda-style tribunals. Instead, they favour a shift back to national justice over international law. The Rwanda tribunal's legacy might be that it is remembered as the first and last of its kind in Africa.

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