International law prosecutor describes work with International Criminal Court

Students with an interest in international law will have a chance to hear a lecture Wednesday night by Fatou Bensouda, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

The court is the first permanent criminal court that hears cases of international crimes.

Bensouda is speaking at 7 p.m. in Gerrard Hall, delivering the Hillard Gold ‘39 Lecture. The Daily Tar Heel had a chance to sit down with Bensouda and ask her questions about her life and her work Tuesday afternoon.

DTH: Out of all the work that you’ve done, what cases have kind of stuck with you the most? Which ones are the most memorable to you?

Bensouda: That’s one thing about criminal justice, it’s that you kind of get sucked in by it, and no one case is more important than the others.

But I remember one of the first cases I handled which was a case of the ... we call it a case of “the baby in the well.” A baby, a young child, was killed and thrown in a well by the friend of the father. I think he said he was instructed to do this so that he would become rich. It was some supernatural beliefs that led him to do it.

So definitely this is one of the cases that stuck to me up to today, and another one is the case of a rape of a 14-month-old baby. That can never go away; it stays with me.

But at the international level, you’re now talking about massive crimes. However much you prepared at the national level, you can never be that prepared. To be into these international crimes, these massive crimes, massive rapes, massive killings, pillaging — where you have thousands of perpetrators, thousands of victims — for those ones you cannot just individually say that I will stick with this one and not the other because it’s just all over the place.

DTH: When people talk about crimes like genocide, they often use the phrase “never again.” Do you think that there will ever be a day when “never again” really happens?

Bensouda: I am praying. I am praying that this will one day happen because definitely so far it hasn’t. We have made this promise to ourselves and to the international community over and over and over again, and I think it is about time that we really mean what we say and we resolve to do that. Even recently, after Rwanda, we said, “Never again will it happen. This genocide cannot happen again.”

But as we speak today, it is happening. You can take the example of Darfur and Sudan. Thirteen target groups ... 13 ethnic groups are being targeted and are being systematically eliminated, and the international community is not doing much to stop this. At the (International Criminal Court) we have issued arrest warrants against those we think have the greatest responsibility for these crimes.

DTH: How do you think this sort of work affects you? I imagine you’ve seen some pretty painful and difficult stuff in your line of work; do you feel like that affects you at all?

Bensouda: Obviously it affects me in the sense that, first of all, you wish they were not happening at all. Because there are so many innocent victims of this conflict — unimaginable atrocities being committed to innocent people — it shouldn’t happen. And for that, sometimes there’s a lot of frustration when you feel that you want to do something, and you want to do more. You want to get on with your cases.

You sometimes have obstructions and obstacles and politics and what have you from going ahead with it. In a way, maybe that is what affects me. The fact that some of us are in a position to do something, to get on with the work that we have been mandated to do, but we are not able to do because of outside reasons beyond our control. For me, this is frustrating.

DTH: Do you have any kind of advice for someone who wants to get into international law?

Bensouda: I think that’s a very good aspiration. This is an area which I think is growing very fast. But it also needs a lot of committed people, more committed people each day, to ensure that what we are called to do, under the Rome Statute, we have the capacity to do. But as a young lawyer coming up, I think that the first thing that needs to be done is to do some form of an internship with the ICC. Because sometimes, some people think that after the initial experience they may not want to go ahead with it. This field needs total commitment.

But also, you don’t necessarily have to work in the ICC alone to get involved in international criminal justice. You can be involved in the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) works. NGOs support a lot of what we do at the ICC, so this is another area that one can look at. You see recently the example of “Invisible Children” trying to push this bill. That’s also something that is very interesting.

DTH: You mentioned “Invisible Children,” and I know you said you’ve been working in Darfur. Do you think that the ICC has made positive strides toward ending that phenomenon?

Bensouda: I think so. I think that the various efforts that have been made to achieve peace in Darfur and bring more stability is largely as a result of the warrants that have been issued against the head of state. I feel there is an impact. I would say that.