Tribunal seeks compensation for war victims

Judges from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have proposed that the UN Security Council consider setting up a mechanism to compensate victims of the 1994 genocide, a letter released on Tuesday at the UN headquarters in New York said. The judges, however, said they did not see a role for the tribunal in handling the issue. The letter, from ICTR’s president, Navanethem Pillay, was addressed to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who forwarded it to the Security Council. She noted that ICTR judges did not feel it would be desirable for the tribunal to be in charge of assessing compensation claims, arguing that such a responsibility would “severely hamper the everyday work of the tribunal and would be highly destructive” to its principal mandate.

In her view, there were “other quicker and simpler methods which will ensure that the victims of criminal acts in Rwanda receive just compensation”. She suggested that the tribunal could be vested with the power of ordering compensation payments from a trust fund to victims who appeared as witnesses in trials before it. “Such a measure would require the amendment of the tribunal’s statute by the Council,” she noted. Annan also notified the Council that a similar letter had also been sent by the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Judge Claude Jorda, expressing the same sentiments.