The United Nations Security Council must ensure that justice for Saddam Hussein's victims is part of Iraq's political transition, Human Rights Watch said today. The Council is currently debating a new resolution on Iraq.
he draft resolution circulated by the United States this week seeks international assistance for the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq, but makes no reference to justice or human rights issues.
"President Bush and Prime Minister Blair placed great emphasis on the abuses Saddam Hussein committed against his own people as a justification for military action against Iraq," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "But what are they doing now to ensure justice and accountability for those terrible crimes?"
The Coalition Provisional Authority has failed to take concrete steps to ensure those responsible receive fair trials before impartial and independent courts. While some recent efforts have been made, coalition forces initially failed to secure gravesites, resulting in the destruction of substantial evidence, and numerous documents were pilfered or destroyed in looting.
"It is a sad irony that the United States and United Kingdom should be investing such effort in investigating Saddam's chemical and biological weapons program, but at the same time doing so little with regard to justice for his crimes against his own people," Roth said.
Ensuring accountability for past abuses would be essential for establishing security in Iraq by dissuading people from taking the law into their own hands, Human Rights Watch said. The Security Council should appoint a group of international and Iraqi experts to coordinate evidence collection and preservation and consider justice options, as it did for the former Yugoslavia. This proposal was supported by late Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Iraq, before his death last month in a bomb attack.
Human Rights Watch stressed that any justice or accountability process in Iraq must have legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of the Iraqi people and international community as a whole. It warned that after thirty years of Ba'ath Party rule the Iraqi judicial system lacked the capacity and independence to try crimes of this complexity and magnitude and would need international support and assistance.
"Time is of the essence," said Roth. "Unless the Security Council shows leadership on this issue, more vital evidence risks being lost and perpetrators may escape the law."
