The people committing these crimes fall into a number of categories. There are the rebel forces. There are also the forces who hold power, by which I mean the security forces, the police and the army. Rapes are also committed by other people, those just passing by who cannot be found afterwards. So you cannot get justice from them because they cannot be identified. I am not even talking about regions in the east of the country where there are conflicts.
When I talk about the difficulty of obtaining justice, I am speaking more about the armed forces, military judges. Under the Rome Statute, the military justice system in the DRC presently has the authority to sit in judgment over those committing crimes against humanity. That includes rape, which is actually considered a crime against humanity. But when you go to the military justice system, which, as we know, has to obey the military command, with its very strict rules, the judge is not independent. The judge is bound by the hierarchy. He cannot act independently. That is why we wonder how we can seek justice from the same police and military who hold the actual power.
Today, we know that rebel forces come and rape women, but we also know that, right after the talks in Sun City, forces associated with the rebels joined with the forces in power and set up a government. These are the same rebel forces who committed the crimes in the east of the DRC before coming to the table for peace talks. They have to answer for their crimes, but they now hold the power. How can we get justice from people who hold the power? A peace and reconciliation commission was set up in the DRC but it never worked because rebel forces managed to get inside the commission. It was not independent and it could not work. In a nutshell, that is the difficulty we are facing.