RIGHTS-UN
Victims Need Justice from ICC, Say NGOs
By Farhan Haq
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 31 (IPS) - ''I don't know my age,'' confesses J.B. Toe, a demobilised Liberian soldier. ''I were raised in the hand of rebel -- they don't know age business.''
Toe was recruited to fight for one of Liberia's many armed factions around 1991, when he was probably about nine-years-old, according to the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Save the Children.
''I were just innocent child (then),'' he told Una McCauley, Save the Children's Liberia programme manager, recently. ''I can't be innocent again, but I want to be child.''
''I started to learn to fire gun and it get used to me now,'' adds Daniel, who also fought in Liberia's civil war from the age of 10 until he was demobilised five years later. ''It is bad because we were small, small, and they made us to fight, so they are bad.''
McCauley contends that child soldiers like Toe may be guilty of atrocities, but they are themselves suffering from war crimes. ''I make no excuses ... but we have to bear in mind that those children themselves are the saddest and most pathetic victims,'' she argued here this week.
So far, governments are under little pressure to prevent the forced recruitment or abduction of child soldiers - even though the Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly discourages the use of children below the age of 17 in armed forces or militias.
However, as debate continues here on the structure of a possible International Criminal Court (ICC), governments are close to ironing out language which would make the use of children below the age of 15 in any type of military activity a war crime. Final language on restrictions against employing child soldiers ''has to be finalised within the next few days,'' said McCauley.
If that provision stands, armed forces that use child soldiers could then be prosecuted by an ICC, if it is created - as is expected - during a month-long conference to begin in Rome on Jun. 15.
The restriction on child soldiers is just one of several new proposals being considered in the ongoing ICC debate which stresses the need to protect specific victims of war crimes, noted Michael O'Flaherty, head of the British-based rights group, Redress.
The initial draft statute for the ICC, O'Flaherty said, was ''almost silent'' about victims' rights; but months of pressure from NGOs has resulted in the adding of several clauses designed to protect the rights of all victims - particularly women and children.
Some provisions added over the past year pave the way for victims' involvement in all stages of legal proceedings, and allow the Court to order that evidence still be collected following guilty verdicts ''in the interests of justice''. Other clauses, including one that would guarantee ''appropriate forms of reparation'' including compensation and rehabilitation, are still being debated.
The ICC is now being hailed by experts - ranging from human- rights activists to clinical psychologists - as a major step in helping to ease the pain of war crime victims.
''The establishment of a permanent ICC...is a milestone in paving the way to adjust the balance sheet, to share what we have learned and what we can apply to help all victims and trauma survivors of the past...and to prevent new ones from occurring in the future,'' said Dr Yael Danieli, a psychologist who has dealt with the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors.
Still, some NGOs believe that governments have more work to do before victims' rights can be dealt with fairly by the proposed Court.
Cristina Rosello Gates, who has counseled Filipina 'comfort women' used as sex slaves during the Second World War, has urged that the Court address gender-based crimes as seriously as it would treat all other war crimes.
''Please give gender issues a second look,'' Gates said to governments attending the ICC preparatory meetings. ''It pains me to the core when you say, 'These are just women's issues'.''
As with all crimes committed before the creation of the Court, the abduction and sexual servitude of the comfort women will likely never be handled by the ICC. However, Indai Sajor of the Asian Centre for Women's Human Rights has argued that the comfort women - along with all future victims of gender-based crimes - should be allowed to testify in the Court and to win reparations. (END/IPS/fah/98)