INTRODUCTION

In the recent past securing reparations for the victims of harm caused by gross human rights violations has become more of a priority due to major developments internationally,regionally, and locally. These developments have occurred at an institutional level with the formation of bodies such as the International Criminal Court as well as the international criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Also, there has been development in the jurisprudence and standards relating to when reparations are due. These developments and advances, however, have not often translated into specific reparations for victims; especially in Africa where gross human rights abuses have been part of the landscape within pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial societies and countries.

Any discussion of reparations due for those who have suffered gross human rights abuses in the Great Lakes area of central Africa has to begin within an analysis of events during the nineteenth century, when the European powers carved up Africa into different areas of exploitation. This is not to say that no abuses occurred before the colonial period, but reparations for those abuses would be practicably impossible to secure because identifying specific perpetrators would be extraordinarily difficult. However, claims against colonial powers, could be brought, although numerous legal difficulties would have to be surmounted. Claims relating to events before 1885 are not likely to be successful. It was in this year that the scramble for Africa culminated and saw the colonial powers meeting at the Berlin Conference to draft a Treaty which would determine which colonial power would take control in which area of Africa. The treaty that was drafted provided that the local population would be well treated by the colonisers. As a result of the agreements reached and set out in the treaty, borders were established which took no interest in where different tribes were situated. Groups were divided up regardless of language, culture, ethnicity or other affinity. To this day the colonial borders remain sacrosanct, not because they are deemed acceptable, but because to open up the issue to debate would lead inevitably to conflict. Rivalries over these borders, already a problem, would become an even greater issue within Africa and would lead to further wars and loss of life.