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Archbishop
Tutu pledges support for the Save the SADC Tribunal campaign
SADC Tribunal Rights Watch
August 14, 2012
Nobel peace
laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has added his highly respected
voice to an international campaign to reinstate the regional court
of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal, a
vital institution for legal redress.
The campaign
is spearheaded in the SADC region by the Southern Africa Litigation
Centre, the International Commission of Jurists and the SADC Lawyers'
Association, supported by leading legal and human rights organisations.
On August 17
and 18, the SADC Heads of State will meet at a summit in Maputo,
Mozambique, at which the Tribunal's future role, notably its
human rights jurisdiction, will be decided.
A 10-minute
video narrated by Archbishop Tutu and available for viewing on You-Tube,
outlines the history of the Tribunal and explains its vital role
when governments fail to deliver justice and are not held to account.
Without it,
Tutu says, the region will lose a vital ally of its citizens, investors
and future development, and victims of state-sponsored human rights
abuses - notably in Zimbabwe - will have nowhere to turn.
A three-minute
version of the film, created for general distribution and the social
media, can also be viewed on You-Tube.
The Botswana
Civil Society Solidarity Coalition for Zimbabwe (BOCISCOZ) has set
up a "Save the SADC Tribunal" petition which was launched
today on the Change.org
website, a leading platform for social change.
The Archbishop
of York, Dr John Sentamu, formerly of Uganda, who experienced human
rights abuses at the hands of the late dictator, Idi Amin, has pledged
his support for the campaign.
"It is
now time for all communities and organisations within the southern
African region to stand together as one to petition their Heads
of State to reinstate and strengthen the mandate of the SADC Tribunal
regional court," he said.
"The SADC
states stood together successfully to defeat apartheid in South
Africa. They must now stand together to stop human rights abuses
and bring an end to government-sponsored violence within member
states which has led to deaths, shocking injuries and mass scale
displacements," the Archbishop stressed.
The SADC Tribunal
was set up as an independent legal body to ensure that every country
within SADC respected and conformed to the principles and objectives
enshrined in the SADC Treaty of 1992, notably:
- Peace, security
and solidarity
- Human rights
- Democracy
- The Rule
of Law
- Equality
- The peaceful
settlement of disputes
The Tribunal
had exclusive jurisdiction where member states had disputes with
SADC or its institutions.
It also provided
SADC citizens with a platform to seek justice and hold their governments
to account when their human rights had been infringed upon and local
legal remedies had been exhausted.
From 2007, the
Tribunal ruled on 20 cases that included disputes between citizens
and their governments, as well as cases between companies and governments.
The majority involved Zimbabwean citizens taking the Zimbabwe government
to court.
In December
2010, in their judgment on the Gondo case, the Tribunal ordered
the Zimbabwe government to pay US$17 million compensation to nine
victims of organised violence and torture perpetrated by the army
and police.
The victims had suffered bullet wounds, beatings and even paralysis
as a result of the physical violence at the hands of the police
and soldiers.
Two years earlier, in November 2008, the Tribunal had ruled that
President Mugabe's land reform programme was both illegal
and racist.
Following intensive
lobbying by the Zimbabwe government, the SADC heads of state suspended
the Tribunal in August 2011 and there is widespread concern that
they will decide at the Maputo summit to remove the Court's
human rights jurisdiction.
The proposal
to remove the Tribunal's human rights mandate is contained
in a draft amendment to the SADC Protocol, which was adopted by
SADC Ministers of Justice in Angola during June.
However, pressure
is growing on the heads of state to not only retain the original
mandate of the Tribunal, but also to strengthen it.
As Archbishop
Tutu pointed out during an interview in the film, "If you
are a law-abiding head of state, why are you scared that people
might want to go through another adjudicator, unless it is that
you fear you are likely to fall foul of the law?
"What
happened in Zimbabwe could happen elsewhere in the SADC region,"
he cautioned.
Film links:
The link to
the petition is http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/save-the-sadc-tribunal
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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