Abstract / Summary:
Our project puts impunity to the fore, whose effects are little understood and hardly examined although it is also characteristic for other protracted conflicts in a large number of countries. Eastern Congo (North- and South-Kivu) is a notorious conflict area, involving not only the Congolese army and several regional militias, but also armed groups from neighbouring countries such as Rwanda. The impunity of perpetrators also refers to the weakness of the state (i.e. its institutions such as courts, police, prisons, army), unable or unwilling to impose its monopoly of power. While this project cannot address all aspects of impunity, it will focus on three questions: 1) What are the forms and reasons for impunity in Eastern DRC? 2) What is the impact of impunity on local communities? What are the strategies they develop to address this phenomenon? 3) To what extent are informal institutions of local and regional (customary) law in Eastern Congo able to address serious crimes and thus substitute for the impunity at the state level? To what extent can they complement endeavours of the state and the international community to address impunity?
Impunity in the DRC can be studied on a macro- and on the micro-level. On the macro-level (state, province, district) impunity means first the amnesty for warlords, co-opted into the government, and the integration of their militias into the national armed forces even if they have committed most serious war crimes. Second, impunity refers to the inability or unwillingness of the state to punish violations of its own (criminal) law. This form of impunity is due to the fact that courts do not function properly, court decisions are not enforced, state institutions such as courts, prisons and police have merely collapsed, or such institutions have never existed or are too far away to be reached. On the micro-level (village, town) there are various informal institutions based on local and regional (customary) law in Eastern Congo derived from traditional norms and enforced within village communities or - less often - between neighbouring villages. The question, however, arises to what extent these forms of informal law have kept or even increased their efficacy in settling conflicts peacefully or whether they have been weakened or even collapsed along with the state legal system.
In order to study the forms and effects of impunity, we will have to focus on three categories of crimes: 1) Sexual and gender based violence (rape and all sorts of sexual violence, not only committed by armed groups but also by civilians), 2) offences against life and limb (murder and mutilation), 3) offences against property rights (land-grabbing and destruction or requisition of property).
The project, combining law, legal sociology and social anthropology and having a comparative perspective, should contribute to a better understanding of what impunity means to local communities in areas affected by protracted conflict, including, in particular, the functioning and resilience of local and regional forms of informal justice and the contribution of these institutions to the process of re-establishing law and order after an armed conflict. Such understanding is also relevant for the on-going and future efforts of the international community to re-establish the rule of law and 'transitional justice' in Eastern DRC.
