Global Policy Forum

By Kevin J. Kelley

Critics of Rwanda war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte have supported her upcoming removal from the post, announced last week by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Del Ponte's detractors say she was a poor administrator and an ineffective prosecutor, who did not devote sufficient attention to her duties at the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

But some human-rights activists say that del Ponte is being unfairly targeted because of her determination to prosecute Rwandan government officials for alleged reprisal killings following the 1994 genocide.

That explanation for the move to dismiss del Ponte was detailed in a recent New York Times report. Citing unnamed Western diplomats and Arusha tribunal officials as its sources, the Times said that the US and British governments had privately urged that prosecutions of Rwandan officials be dropped. The US has also supported the Rwandan government's campaign to have del Ponte removed, the Times added.

At issue is the effectiveness and even-handedness of a tribunal created by the UN in 1995 in response to the killings a year earlier of nearly a million Rwandans, mostly ethnic Tutsi. The genocide was carried out by members of Rwanda's Hutu majority who acted in the aftermath of the unexplained shooting down of the plane carrying the country's Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana.

The Rwandese Patriotic Front eventually managed to rout the Hutu "genocidaires" and established a Tutsi-dominated government that remains in power. An estimated 30,000 Hutu fell victim to revenge killings following the ouster of the old regime. No Tutsi have been brought before the tribunal to date.

Operating on an annual budget of $100 million, the Arusha tribunal has completed 15 cases in the past nine years. Another 61 criminal proceedings are underway. Del Ponte herself acknowledges that the progress of the tribunal has been slow. But she says court procedures, not her own administrative performance, are to blame. Del Ponte has also charged the Rwanda government with trying to obstruct her investigations.

"Rwanda has had nine years to deal with such cases, and it has not done a significant job," Alison des Forges, a Rwanda specialist at Human Rights Watch, told the Times. Mr Annan, on his part, denies that his decision to ask the UN Security Council to replace del Ponte was made at the instigation of outside powers.

"There has been no politicking, and if there has been, it has not been at my level, and there has been no pressure," he said at a news conference last week.

A US-based human-rights researcher says Mr Annan acted properly in recommending that del Ponte's contract not be renewed. "There are some very valid reasons why this woman should be removed," declares Binaifer Nowrojee, who has studied the Arusha tribunal's performance in her capacity as a researcher at Harvard University's Human Rights Centre.

Nowrojee notes that del Ponte spent only 38 days of the past year in Arusha. In addition to her duties in regard to Rwanda, she also serves as chief prosecutor of the UN tribunal for war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. That tribunal sits in the Netherlands, where, critics charge, del Ponte spends a disproportionate amount of her time.

Mr Annan will ask the Security Council to give del Ponte another four-year term in her Yugoslavia-related post.

Nowrojee also points to a petition from 60 non-governmental organisations in Rwanda calling on the Security Council to consider relieving del Ponte of her duties at the Arusha tribunal. The NGOs specifically charge that del Ponte has failed to prosecute rape cases with warranted diligence. "During del Ponte's tenure there has been a decline in the number of new indictments that contain sexual violence charges," the NGOs say.

Advocates point out that, during the course of the 1994 genocide, tens of thousands of Rwandan women were individually or gang-raped, held in sexual slavery, or sexually mutilated. Some of del Ponte's critics do acknowledge, however, that the Arusha tribunal will be seen as having dispensed "victor's justice" if it fails to prosecute any Tutsi for crimes committed against Hutu.

If only one side is held accountable, Nowrojee says, the tribunal "would be diminished in its impact, and there would be a negative effect on what we are trying to achieve in an era of international justice."

Meanwhile, Rwanda genocide survivors said last week that with the likelihood non-renewal of Carla Del Ponte's contract, the UN Security Council should substitute her with someone who understands African culture well. "We need someone who is ready to work closely with other organs of the tribunal to revamp the system and speed up the process for the completion strategy by 2008," said Suzan Bitware, a genocide widow from Avega Agahozo, near Kigali.

The prosecutor is believed to have spent only 38 days in both Kigali and Arusha in 2001. She has visited Kigali only two times this year.

These views are shared by the Rwandan government. "We request the UN to give our tribunal an independent prosecutor who is ready to follow up the proceedings of the tribunal and not someone who considers it a part-time job," Gerald Gahima, Rwanda's General Prosecutor to the Supreme Court said.

He accused del Ponte of "running a disorganised prosecution side" which he said was responsible for the court's slow pace in bringing to justice those accused of major roles in the 1994 genocide.

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