It has been six long years since Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord, first went on trial in The Hague accused of recruiting child soldiers
It has been six long years since Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord, first went on trial in The Hague accused of recruiting child soldiers. The proceedings were stopped twice, and judges heard much evidence of crimes that Lubanga was not accused of, such as rape and sexual violence. The charges against him were narrow because prosecutors sought a case that they hoped would be open-and-shut – and also quick. They got neither, but they did secure the international criminal court's first conviction yesterday, and in so doing marked a small but important step in the struggle against impunity for grave crimes.
Lubanga, the former head of the Union of Congolese Patriots, is a relatively small fish, compared to Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir or Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo. But being small does not make him easier to catch. If Lubanga is guilty of using child soldiers then so, too, is his co-defendant Bosco Ntaganda, who has not yet been arrested and appears at news conferences alongside senior Congolese officials. His continued liberty, they claim, is helpful to the peace process. It might be truer to say that his liberty is helpful to profits in the gold-rich area on which his militia preys. In addition to the ICC charges, Ntaganda commanded troops that massacred 150 civilians in the North Kivu province in 2008 and killed 800 civilians in the Ituri district in 2002.
In northern Congo, another war criminal operates with impunity, although not without publicity. Kony 2012, the video that has now been seen 80m times, may have generated more heat than light on a number of issues: Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, is no longer in northern Uganda; the region desperately needs money for resettlement; and focusing on one deranged war criminal who must face justice for his crimes will not end the practice of militias preying on defenceless villagers in the Central African Republic, South Sudan and the DRC.
A viral video on Kony does not of itself translate into action. Human Rights Watch, which has done more than anyone else to document the LRA's blood-soaked trail, says that the LRA operates in extremely remote areas, it replenishes its ranks exclusively by preying on civilians, and the campaign against it needs to be built around civilian protection. The construction of a network of mobile phone towers would effectively give civilians in remote areas the early warning system they desperately need. The LRA has carried on its campaign for 26 years, and it is thought to be weaker now, consisting of no more than 300 combatants along with abducted children and adults. A better strategy should be devised to encourage defections. Online moral outrage spreads awareness, but the LRA will outlive it unless the right steps are taken.