By Ayodeji Faduba
I love telling stories, so here is one.
Some 25 years ago in a post traumatised city of Kigali Rwanda, Prosecutors had brought indictments against those most responsible for the Rwandan genocide. Charges, genocide, crimes against humanity, and other crimes. These indictments were not systematically charging for rape!
A young lady not older than 30 was recruited as an investigator, she goes with men to the field and in speaking with witnesses was hearing about rape. She came back to the office as a young rookie Lawyer and starts to ask questions, why are we not charging for rape as an element of the crime of genocide systematically in all these indictments? She is shut down by wise Lawyers of many years from all over the world. She refused to be silenced. She wrote memos and presentations, no way! “She just lacks experience” “How will she sustain the charge” “These young ones never listen” “Pity she must have been raped as a child, she has it in on rape” “Genocide is about serious crimes”
I sat helplessly through these sessions. Sometimes she was aggressive, sometimes she cried, sometimes she spoke with so much resignation, you knew the lights were getting dimmed in her soul.
Then one day, fortune smiles on her, the big guy at the top somehow decided to give it a shot! The Senior Lawyers gasped! It was order, you comply.
“Don’t blame us if we lose the case”, “trials are about facts and not emotions and immaturity” “God knows what she did with the boss for this to become an order.”
We rushed to the drawing board, filed for permission to amend indictments, sent investigators out to get evidence. A senior Lawyer was always laughing at the fuss! The evidence was always there but most did not think it would fly in court preferring to see many of the cases as consensual.
It did! Our Tribunal became the first to rule on the matter. It is now international jurisprudence used in war situations and in the case of many other genocide perpetrators around the world.
By the time Prosecutors were quoting the Rwandan Tribunal around the world, no one remembers the crying baby Lawyer, Mubi from Kenya. The lone voice that even some of us women were afraid to back openly.
The victory went to the same Senior Lawyers, men who went to Court with the evidence. Not once have I heard her name in any présentation about this victory, not once! The same Lawyers who resisted, clicked their glasses filled with champagne and the music of celebration.
Africans are wise! A wise one plants trees even if he/she will never eat of the fruits.
Today is International Women’s Day, I raise my glass to Mubi, I forget her last name now. The victims are thanking you from their graves for those who died and those who lived to rebuild their shattered lives. I salute you for the fact that the crimes against women during the civil war in my country now has a name, a code that admits that through the ages, women took the soft “bullets” with their bodies in war. They were soldiers in the other frontline too. Their stories speak of war and peace.
Mubi, thank you for planting the tree! Asante sana!
Ayodeji Faduba, former Chief, Information and Evidence Section, United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
