States’ Cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Abstract

Shortly after the 1994 genocide, an international tribunal for Rwanda has been created by the United Nations Security Council in response to grave atrocities committed where more than one million people have perished. Although judicially independent, the ICTR must rely on international cooperation in order to successfully carry out its mandate as it has no organ to enforce its decisions.

Cooperation by states or international organizations is vital to the collection of evidence as well as to the detention and transfer of accused persons. This cooperation is also required in the relocation of sensitive witnesses or the enforcement of sentences handed up down by the Tribunal. Whether states are willing to provide the necessary cooperation will largely determine the ability of the Rwanda Tribunal to fulfil its mandate.

States’ cooperation with the ICTR is essential if the Tribunal has to operate properly and perform its functions. The legal basis of the obligation imposed to states has two characters, a general character stemming from their being member states of UN and the specific one stemming from the United Nations Security Council Resolution RES/955 (1995) where it states that “all states shall cooperate fully with ICTR and its organs (…)”.

Unfortunately, states are still reluctant to fulfil their obligation to cooperate with ICTR. Different reasons are put forward by states to justify their refusal to cooperate. Sovereignty, domestic legislation, national interests or national security, disinterestedness of UNSC, are among others, the main reasons advanced by states.