Edmund Kagire
18 August 2008
Arusha, Tanzania — ARCHIVES of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) should remain in East Africa for future indictments of Genocide suspects like Felicien Kabuga that are still on the run.
This was the recurring argument yesterday during a two-day consultative meeting on the United Nations ICTR archives that is currently taking place in Arusha, Tanzania.
The meeting, organized by the East African Law Society and the Open University of Tanzania, was convened to discuss the future of the massive ICTR archives. They consist of case files, correspondence files, affidavits, record books, seizures, audio and video evidence which the court has produced from 1994 to date.
The ICTR Judicial archives are on the verge of being transferred to the United Nation's New York Headquarters' or The Hague as soon as the court winds up its work in 2010.
Addressing legislators, archivists and curators from East Africa and beyond, Dr. Jean-Pele Fomete said that it is in the interest of East Africa and Africa as a whole that these historical and valuable archives be retained for future indictments of more Genocide suspects eluding the long arm of justice, and also for the sake of history and future reference by Rwandans who are the actual victims of the 1994 Genocide that claimed over 800,000 Tutsis.
Fomete, who is the ICTR Legal Advisor and the Chairperson of the ICTR Legacy Committee, said that it would be an injustice if the archives of the ICTR are taken away from the rightful owner to overseas where they would not be valued much.
"We have appropriate storage facilities that meet international archival standards, giving us the capacity to store these documents so that a Rwandan Genocide victim can easily access them, a student can use them for research and use it as future evidence to pin the missing Genocide victims," underscored Fomete.
The EALS CEO Don Deya said that taking away the archives will be a loss to the East African judiciary, and called on Africa to stand up against the relocation.
"Africa has for long been an extraction area and if such material is taken away from us, it will be another extraction from Africa," remarked Mugambi Kiai from Kenya.
Dr. Yitiha Simbeya, head of the Faculty of Law at the Open University, said that the Archive will benefit students in New York and Hague, and it's quite unfair to the Rwandan student who wants to study the cases and conduct research about the Genocide.
Ayodeji Fadugba from the ICTR Archives explained to the meeting that even the present storage facilities the ICTR are using at the moment have the capacity to store the materials safe and intact for the next 30 years as a new and safer repository is put in place.
The EALS is made up of the five Bar Associations from the five East African Countries.
Officials from Kigali Bar Association and the National University of Rwanda attended the meeting.
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I would respectively submit that the location of the archives is a minor issue. The archives of the Tribunal are electronic. Most users will want to use the archives electronically. And there can be multiple copies of electronic archives in different venues, so the United Nations and Rwanda could each have an archive. Even better, an online repository with sufficient bandwidth will give everyone in the world access who requires it. There are protection issues with some of the documents and those will have to be addressed thoroughly before any archive leaves the possession of the United Nation. David Akerson Former Chief, Information and Evidence Section Office of the Prosecutor United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda