THE decision over the weekend by the African Union to create the first position to tackle genocide on the continent has been welcomed by human rights lawyers and activists as a positive move.
They are even more ecstatic about AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat’s appointment of Senegalese jurist Adama Dieng as the first Special Envoy for the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide and Other Mass Atrocities, 30 years after the Rwanda genocide, during which about one million Tutsis were killed over a three-month period.
Dieng is an experienced international lawyer and human rights specialist who, from 1990 to 2000, was Secretary-General of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists before he was appointed by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in January 2001 as the Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
In July 2012, he became UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide.
He recently founded the Pan-African Alliance for Transparency and the Rule of Law (PATROL-AFRICA).
Members of PATROL’s board welcomed Dieng’s appointment, telling Africa Briefing that it is a move in the right direction as the AU tries ‘to combat the ideology of hate and genocide on the continent’, as Faki said when announcing Dieng’s appointment.
PATROL board member Ben Kioko, a Kenyan who has been a judge of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights since 2012, told Africa Briefing: ‘Adama Dieng is an internationally recognised expert on human rights whose contribution to the development and strengthening of the African human rights system has not been sufficiently recognised.’
He said Dieng had ‘specifically made an invaluable contribution to the strengthening of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in its engagement with civil society and other actors as well as the establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights’.
Judge Kioko added that Dieng’s ‘strong competencies in preventing and combating atrocity crimes will no doubt assist the African Union and our beloved continent in ensuring that [saying] “never again” to atrocity crimes becomes a living doctrine and not just an aspiration’.
Another board member, Dr Ahmed Abaddi, a Moroccan who is Secretary-General of the Rabita Mohammadia of Ulema, congratulated Dieng ‘for this most needed responsibility’, adding: ‘PATROL will spare no effort in assisting him in this key mission.’
Dr Charles Majinge, who has been a long-time assistant to Dieng, said that the Special Envoy had done much for the cause of justice and the rule of law.
‘His career has always been intertwined with prevention of mass atrocities.
‘His service to the ICTR and his role as Special Adviser on Genocide Prevention attest to this exceptional record.
‘It is gratifying to see him being called upon to offer his outstanding qualities of leadership in the services of the African people and, above all, the victims of these atrocities,’ Majinge told Africa Briefing.
Another PATROL board member, Mohamed Chande Othman, a former Chief Justice of Tanzania and currently Chair of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, told Africa Briefing that Dieng’s appointment ‘couldn’t have come at a better time.’