Uganda ordered to pay DRC $453m in reparations

The International Court of Justice has awarded a fraction of the $US billion demanded by Kinshasa.

The last Ugandan troops leave the DRC in May 2003. Picture: AFP

The International Court of Justice has ordered Uganda to pay $US325m ($453m) to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the prolonged conflict that erupted between the two countries in the 1990s.

“The court notes that the reparation awarded to the DRC for damage to persons and to property reflects the harm suffered by individuals and communities as a result of Uganda’s breach of its international obligations,” judge Joan E. Donoghue, the court’s president, said in the ruling.

The ruling segmented dam­ages into three distinct sections: $US225m for damage to persons; $40m for damage to property; and $60m for damage related to natural resources.

The Hague-based court, a UN tribunal that handles disputes between countries, said the total amount for the first $US250m damages would paid in five annual instalments, starting on September 1. It said the judgment amounts were within Uganda’s capacity to pay.

Congo originally asked for more than $US11bn in damages. Judges said Kinshasa had failed to prove its neighbour was directly responsible for any more than 15,000 of the hundreds of thousands of people believed to have died in the war. The 1998-2003 conflict triggered a rush for Congolese mineral wealth, drawing in neighbouring countries in a conflict that left more than five million people dead in the region.

The country first brought its dispute with Uganda, which borders Congo to its northeast, to the ICJ in 1999.

In 2005, the court found Uganda liable for reparations. It ruled that Uganda violated the principle of nonintervention and breached human rights laws through the “brutalities committed by its army”. “The unlawful military intervention by Uganda was of such magnitude and duration that the court considers it to be a grave ­violation of the prohibition of the use of force,” it wrote at the time.

Quoting the 2005 findings, Judge Donoghue in Wednesday’s ruling said the court showed Uganda “committed acts of killing, torture and other forms of inhumane treatment of the Congolese civilian population, destroyed villages and civilian buildings, failing to distinguish between civilian and military targets.”

Relations between Kampala and Kinshasa have appeared to improve and the two militaries are working together in operations against an Islamic State-affiliated outfit in eastern Congo. The Ugandan military launched a series of strikes against ISIS-aligned militants in Congo last November.

The Wall Street Journal