 of crimes. They may not be skilled in the use of forensic evidence, in the analysis of fingerprints or DNA evidence. Or there may be insufficient infrastructure to house archives or things like that.
The political obstacles are, of course, ever present, because it is often the case that those who commit serious crimes have a great deal of power. In many contexts, those who commit serious crimes are senior members of governments. And obviously, when that is the case, there is an enormous political challenge to ensuring accountability for what they’ve done.
This seems the more challenging of the two obstacles. How do you overcome a lack of political will?
There is no magic bullet. But we have learned that a combination of factors is central to generating and sustaining political will. Foremost is an empowered domestic civil society capable of demanding accountability from government. This may include human rights NGOs, independent journalists, and courageous members of the bar. Their efforts must be reinforced by consistent diplomatic pressure from the international community. Finally, concrete examples of complementarity in action—which show that it is indeed possible to bring leading perpetrators to account—are important as well.
In addition to the mobile courts, how is the Justice Initiative involved in work on complementarity?
The Open Society Justice Initiative is doing a number of things.
We are documenting the present state of the problem. There is, of course, already an enormous amount of money going to support the rule of law in countries where serious crimes are taking place. And yet not all of that assistance is taking on board the important concern of how best to address accountability for serious crime.
So, we have looked at examples in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Uganda, in Kenya—all three countries that are under the microscope of the ICC at present—to look at what kinds of rule of law aid have been provided and how well they have they addressed the challenges of complementarity specifically.
We are also working with the European Commission to develop a toolkit on complementarity. Once donors and governments are willing to say, “Okay, I get it, complementarity is something I need to take into account in my work, but how do I do it?” We want to be in the position to offer some answers.