The president of the United Nations (UN) tribunal trying leaders of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Norwegian judge Erick Mose, is under pressure to speed up the work of the huge bureaucratic machine often criticised for its slowness.
The biggest challenge facing Mose, who was elected by his peers on Tuesday, will be to inject a large dose of dynamism into the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
The court has so far only managed to try a handful of indicted suspects and to detain an even smaller proportion of internationally wanted ”genocidaires” still at large.
Up to a million people were killed in Rwanda over 100 days in 1994, in a government-orchestrated campaign to wipe out the country’s Tutsi minority. Many from the Hutu majority were also killed, either in reprisals by Tutsi rebels or because they refused to go along with the slaughter.
Since it was set up in November 1994 by a UN Security Council resolution, the ICTR has frequently come under fire for its sluggish work, not least from the now Tutsi-led Rwandan government and genocide survivors.
Just 14 former Rwandan officials among the 60-odd detained by the tribunal for their alleged roles in the genocide have been tried.
”It’s not as if the ICTR lacks the means,” said one survivor now working at the tribunal.
”With infinitely fewer human and financial resources, Rwandan courts have managed to try more than 6 000 suspects,” she added, asking not to be named.
The tribunal employs 872 people, many of them senior UN civil servants, and has a budget of $177-million for the current financial year.
Its large modern premises tower over the other buildings in the small town of Arusha.
Court officials explain that ”international justice is very complex” and stress the right of suspects to a proper defence.
”When the first judges arrived, there were no courtrooms, buildings or staff. They had to wait two or three years for things to get properly organised,” Mose’s predecessor, South African Judge Navanethem Pillay, lamented recently.
Pillay also pointed out that member states of the Security Council had recently taken note of the improvements at the tribunal.
And a Rwandan human rights activist based in Arusha agreed that ”procedures are becoming less and less slow”.
”Judges are more demanding than before, often calling on witnesses to be more concise or setting deadlines,” he added.
The tribunal has already tried four suspects this year, a record in its short history.
ICTR spokesperson Rolland Amoussouga believes more cases will be processed before the year is out, thanks largely to the arrival of four new judges who have come to reinforce the 11 already in place.
”Everything depends of course on the collaboration of the Rwandan government, because last year, trials were blocked for a long time for lack of witnesses who were supposed to come from Rwanda,” explained one foreign observer.
At the time, the tribunal openly accused Kigali of preventing witnesses from reaching Arusha.
Mose (52) is the tribunal’s third president and the first who is not an African.
Pillay was recently appointed to the International Criminal Court. -Sapa-AFP