ICC/DRC: Reparations leave victims feeling sore (2/2)

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...