A the Worldwide Felony Court docket in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 31, 2021. (Peter Dejong / AP)
THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS --
The Worldwide Court docket of Justice on Wednesday ordered Uganda to pay US$325 million in compensation to Congo for violence in a long-running battle between the African neighbours that started within the late Nineties.
The compensation order got here greater than 15 years after the UN court docket dominated in a posh, 119-page judgment that preventing by Ugandan troops in Congo breached worldwide legislation.
"The court docket notes that the reparation awarded to the DRC for injury to individuals and to property displays the hurt suffered by people and communities because of Uganda's breach of its worldwide obligations," the court docket's president, U.S. choose Joan E. Donoghue, stated.
The sum awarded was properly beneath the request for greater than $11 billion in damages Congo had submitted to the court docket.
The court docket broke down the compensation into completely different classes of damages. It assessed $225 million for "lack of life and different injury to individuals" that included rape, conscription of kid troopers and the displacement of as much as 500,000 folks.
It assessed one other $40 million for injury to property and $60 million for injury to pure assets, together with the plundering of gold, diamonds, timber and different items by Ugandan forces or rebels they supported.
The case stemmed from years of bloody battle in Congo's mineral-rich east. A dispute over land escalated and turned the Ituri area into the epicenter of a regional warfare wherein Congo's neighbours backed completely different militias of their battles for affect.
The hostilities additionally unfold west, together with to the town of Kisangani, the place Donoghue stated the preventing was between Ugandan and Rwandan forces.
Donoghue stated the Worldwide Court docket of Justice's December 2005 judgment established that "Uganda had dedicated acts of killing among the many civilian inhabitants, had failed to tell apart between civilian and navy targets, had not protected the civilian inhabitants in preventing with different combatants, and as an occupying energy, had didn't take measures to respect and guarantee respect for human rights and worldwide humanitarian legislation in entry."
The 2005 judgment additionally discovered that Congolese armed forces violated a treaty on diplomatic relations by attacking the Ugandan Embassy in Kinshasa and abusing Ugandan diplomats on the embassy and at a global airport. Uganda withdrew a compensation declare in opposition to Congo linked to these findings.
Congo initially filed the case in 1999 in opposition to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, calling the African nations' involvement in battle in Congo a "flagrant breach" of the United Nations constitution.
Congo dropped the case in opposition to Burundi in 2001, and the world court docket dominated in 2002 that it didn't have jurisdiction within the case in opposition to Rwanda.
Underneath Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, who was elected in 2019, relations between Uganda and Congo have been heat. The neighboring international locations now are safety allies, with their armies collectively pursuing rebels in an enormous a part of jap Congo.
The present navy marketing campaign started in November when Uganda's military launched air and artillery strikes in opposition to the Allied Democratic Forces insurgent group.
With Tshisekedi's authorization, Ugandan troops then entered Congo to seek out the rebels, who're blamed for a number of lethal assaults on civilians inside Congo in addition to a sequence of bomb assaults in Uganda.
Uganda's rapprochement with Congo additionally contains efforts by Uganda's authorities to floor greater than 200 kilometres of highway in jap Congo. Ugandan authorities consider the funding would open new markets and increase cross-border commerce.
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Related Press author Rodney Muhumuza contributed from Kampala, Uganda
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