Claude Muhindo Sengenya is Justice Info's correspondent in the DRC. He is a trained professional journalist interested in humanitarian, security and transitional justice issues in the African Great Lakes region. He is a researcher and journalism teacher at the Université de l'Assomption au Congo (UAC), run by the Augustinians of the Assumption. He also works for other online media, including The New Humanitarian (ex-IRIN) and Actualité.cd. His articles cover the dynamics of conflict, peace initiatives, justice and reconciliation, to help rebuild post-conflict societies like the DRC.
After the village of Bogoro, in the Ituri region of north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, our correspondent went to Bunia to interview other beneficiaries of the International Criminal Court's Trust Fund for Victims. These are victims of Thomas Lubanga, the other Congolese militia commander convicted by the ICC. Their experience is different from that of Katanga's victims, and the reparations programme there is not yet over.
The Bogoro massacres were committed in February 2003 against a backdrop of inter-ethnic violence between Lendu and Hema in the province of Ituri, north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Germain Katanga's militia, the Force de résistance patriotique de l'Ituri (FRPI), supported by the Lendu, went on a punitive expedition against Thomas Lubanga's militia, the Union des patriotes congolais/réconciliation et paix, which had set up a base in that village inhabited mainly by Hema. But before convicting Katanga in 2014 of crimes against humanity and war crimes, the International Criminal Court (ICC) convicted Lubanga in 2012 of recruiting child soldiers. And at the end of 2017, the judges set Lubanga's collective reparations obligation at $10 million. As Lubanga was declared indigent, the court ordered the ICC Trust Fund for Victims to implement these reparations for 2,500 victims, including 2,100 direct victims (former child soldiers) and 400 indirect victims (parents and close relatives).
Unlike the reparations in the Katanga case, which were implemented by the Fund itself, those in Lubanga's were carried out by organisations deployed in Ituri. The woman we will identify by the initials NND for security reasons is a former child soldier who was forcibly recruited in 2002 in Nyangarayi, a village in the neighbouring territory of Djugu, when she was selling bananas to help her mother feed her family. Barely 12 at the time, she was raped, conscripted and sent to fight in Lubanga's UPC.
"This rape fills me with emotion every time I remember it and makes me want vengeance. They stole my virginity and gave me gynaecological problems," she told Justice Info in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, where we met her in July.
The limitations of business support
NND fought in the UPC for a year and, according to witnesses, served as an escort girl to Lubanga, then to Bosco Ntaganda, another Congolese warlord convicted by the ICC. She managed to escape when the rival Lendu militia came to attack the UPC in Nyangarayi, enabling the young girl as she was then to join her family in Bunia before finding refuge in Beni, in North Kivu. "In Beni, people who had seen me going around as an escort girl in Lubanga's entourage alerted the security services, who threw me in prison, calling me a spy for the Ituri militia. When I was less than 15 years old, I spent three days in prison," says this young woman who went all the way to The Hague to testify against Lubanga.
Since 2021, NND has been one of the 2,500 beneficiaries of collective reparations linked to the Lubanga case. Under the auspices of the Italian NGO Coopération Internationale (COOPI), which is implementing the programme, NND has received $850 in support for an income-generating activity (IGA) that has enabled her to open a business selling food (beans and rice) and drinks. "When we started up, we had too many expenses. Out of the $850, we had to pay rent, electricity and various state taxes. The business seemed to be doing well, but the capital was insignificant in the face of the difficulties. It wasn't enough to feed you or clothe you. You had to struggle to survive," she recounts. "We were promised support, but there was no financial backing, so it was worthless. I was forced to sell my items before my rent ran out," she continues as she welcomes us into her former shop, converted into a dormitory while waiting for her landlord to reimburse her for remaining months. In addition to the IGA support, NND has also received medical treatment for a fracture she sustained while fleeing the violence, as well as educational support. The reparations programme is financing further education for this former child soldier, who fears unemployment in a country where finding employment is a headache.
Who is entitled to education?
Upar Waron is another former child soldier who lost his older brother and father in the ethnic violence in Ituri. He benefited from education and IGA support that helped him finance his medical studies in Bunia. Although the 33-year-old has now finished his studies, he faces a new obstacle. "All the support invested is in danger of being wasted, because I'm struggling to find the money to register with the Order, which is a prerequisite for working as a doctor. The pharmacy that the Fund helped me to open only worked for five months because I had to sell it to finance the rest of the costs not covered by the Fund: they only agreed to pay us 400 dollars a year, whereas we need more than 1,000 dollars for the final year alone," he explains.
In the Katanga case, some beneficiaries told us that the Fund agreed to support the schooling of children or relatives of the victims who had reached school age. But in the Lubanga case, the situation seems different. "Now they are insisting that they will only provide university education for the victims. But I'm already the father of a whole family, I have children, and what concerns me is feeding them rather than going back to university. Couldn't they rather finance university studies for our children? We are no longer young nor have the time. The trials took a long time and now reparations are available, but we're no longer in a position to study," explains Bienvenu Baraka, who is in his late thirties and served as a child soldier from the age of 12. During our visit to Bunia, Bienvenu confirmed that he had also received $850 in aid for an IGA, training in plumbing and physical care. "In my six months as a child soldier, I fought in Katoto, Iga Barrière and Komanda. It was on the Komanda front that I fell into a gold mine. I suffered a fracture that kept me in pain for more than ten years. Thanks to the Fund, which has given me treatment, I now have prostheses," he says with satisfaction.
Ruth's satisfaction
Like Baraka in Bunia, Ruth Biangire, whom we met in Bogoro, is one of the victims of Lubanga who is delighted to have been given something to rebuild her life. She also received $850, which enabled her to start a bean business, sell fuel and open a butcher's shop in this cattle-breeding village. "I've managed to diversify my sources of income. Every week, I'm able to slaughter a cow, and every day I can sell 600 litres of fuel (1 litre costs 1.5 dollars). My income helps me to meet my needs properly," says this satisfied young woman as we pass her sitting on an "azunu", a seat made from pieces of wood, behind the display of her fuel bottles on the road near Bogoro's main crossroads.
David Sabiti Mugeni, chief of Babiase, of which Bogoro is the capital, says that the reparations have helped many. "Some may say that the reparations are not proportional to the damage suffered, but they should be pleased that they have at least helped many beneficiaries. Had it not been for the reparations, many would be living as beggars. Reparations can't cover everything, the important thing is to manage the little you have received well," says this traditional leader.
What the victims in the Lubanga case, for whom the ICC Reparations Fund programme is due to end in 2026, do not know is whether they will receive the symbolic individual allowance of $250 that was allocated to all Katanga victims.
Women left without care and victims ignored
"My big problem, like that of many women, is gynaecological care," continues NND. "At the hospital, I was told that the rape I suffered during the war had reduced my chances of giving birth. The same is true for several women who have endured the same situation. But when we ask the people supporting us to provide us with appropriate gynaecological care, they say they have limited resources, even though this is the most important need for us women. Putting this aside troubles us. We don't feel healed."
Bienvenu Baraka and Upar Warom are concerned about former comrades with whom they fought in the UPC militia who have received no assistance from the reparations programme. "We need to think about those who have not been identified as victims. I know two of my former comrades in the UPC who have never got anything, even though we endured the same ordeal," says Warom. "My two brothers were also in the movement, but the identification took place while they were away digging for gold, far from Bunia," says Baraka. "So they missed the opportunity to benefit from the reparations. I also know people who were identified to benefit from reparations but whose names were never sent to Bunia."
In Bogoro, in the Katanga case, local notable Etienne Kagwahabi told us that identification had been carried out while many were still refugees in Uganda. "For the sake of social peace, the court should look into ways of including all these victims who have been left out in the cold," he says.
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Other victims left out are those considered undeserving because they suffered crimes that were not considered by the ICC judges. This is the case of Maki Tchetchu Olivier, who was severely tortured while trying to defend his sister, NND. He met us while we were interviewing her. "When they took my sister from Nyangarayi, I chased them. They also arrested me and took us to Rwampara [UPC headquarters]," he says. "They isolated my sister in a house where I heard her screaming as she was still being raped. While I was running to the house to try and help her, they took me and tortured me. I was tied up for two days, full of blood. I was taken to a hospital where I spent three months in a coma. Today, I have prostheses in my arms. I also suffered, but I've never understood why I was left out of the reparation process for crimes that ruined my life."
"An apology would be enough"
NND claims they were assured in The Hague that on their return to Ituri, Katanga and Lubanga would ask the victims for forgiveness for the harm they caused. But since the two former warlords' return to Ituri in May 2020 after their surprise release in Kinshasa as part of a pacification move, "they have never asked us for forgiveness", she says.
"I get angry whenever their names are mentioned. They ruined my life, they stole my childhood," says NND. "I didn't have a normal school education. They destroyed my virginity, my fertility." But, she adds, "for me, an apology would be enough".
NND and her brother Olivier explain that the violence of the early 2000s destroyed the social fabric in Ituri and that, in their view, real dialogue is needed to reconcile the many families that have been torn apart. "We are Lendu, but I served as an escort girl for a Hema [Lubanga]. This has never been accepted by members of my family, who still believe that my father sent his daughter to fight with the Hema to kill her Lendu brothers. But no, I was conscripted by force. At home in our village, in Djugu, our family do not visit us because they still think we served the opposing camp," says NND, tears in her eyes.
In the end, everyone would probably agree with Mrs. Tibelio, in Bogoro, who believes that "the best reparation is peace, because if there is peace, we will be able to develop all our activities, including those supported by the ICC."
