Amnesty International

Faustin-Archange

Touadéra

CAR

Dear Mr. President of the Republic,

During your inauguration for a second term, you declared that the fight against impunity would form “the backbone” of your new five-year term. When you spoke at the start of the new legal year on 16 July 2021, you reaffirmed your “firm commitment to fight social injustice and impunity”, underlining your belief that “justice builds a nation but impunity shames the people”.

And yet the situation regarding justice in the Central African Republic (CAR) remains worrying. CAR has suffered over 20 years of violent conflicts and the different parties involved have committed numerous violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including murder, rape and looting. These crimes constitute war crimes, even crimes against humanity. These crimes have affected the civilian population badly and they are now calling for justice.

To this day, most of those suspected of perpetrating these atrocities have faced no consequences. Some have held positions of significant political responsibility. Victims continue to live alongside perpetrators.

Amnesty International welcomed the establishment of the Special Criminal Court (SCC), a complementary mechanism to the ordinary criminal courts and the International Criminal Court aimed at combating impunity in the country. And yet the SCC has faced several major challenges in fulfilling its mandate. Important positions within the organization remained unfilled for long periods of time. The court has issued at least 25 arrest warrants but very few of them have been acted upon. This may be due to difficulties in locating certain suspects or inaccessibility of the zones where they are living, but there is also insufficient political will to implement some of these arrest warrants, as seen in the case of Minister Hassan Bouba Ali, released shortly after being arrested. This lack of support in the execution of arrest warrants only prolongs the time it takes to obtain justice, and thus the time victims have to wait.

With the SCC entering into its second mandate of five years later this year (October 2023), I would like to take this opportunity to request that, as President of the Central African Republic, you take all feasible measures to push forward on this front and fulfil your commitments to justice.

I ask that you ensure sufficient funding for this mandate of the Special Criminal Court.

I urge you to ensure that all possible measures are taken to implement all arrest warrants issued by the SCC as quickly as possible, regardless of the political, social or military status of the persons targeted by the arrest warrant.

It is also important that you support the regular holding of criminal sessions in ordinary national courts.

Yours faithfully,

Dr.

Arnaud DJOUBAYE

ABAZÈNE

CAR

Dear Mr. President of the Republic,

I ask that you ensure sufficient funding for this mandate of the Special Criminal Court.

It is also important that you support the regular holding of criminal sessions in ordinary national courts.

Yours faithfully,

Write to the President of the Central African Republic