The United Nations’ top court has ordered Uganda to pay the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) $325m in reparations over a brutal war between the neighbours that began in the late 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,” the court’s president, US judge Joan E Donoghue, said on Wednesday.
The compensation order came more than 15 years after the UN court ruled in a complex, 119-page judgement that fighting by Ugandan troops in DRC breached international law. In 200.5 the ICJ ruled that Uganda had to pay reparations, but they were never paid.
The sum awarded was well below the request for more than $11bn in damages DRC had demanded for the occupation of its volatile northeastern Ituri region.
The court broke down the compensation into different categories of damages. It assessed $225m for “loss of life and other damage to persons” that included rape, conscription of child soldiers and the displacement of up to 500,000 people