According to some international observers, the breach of the peace agreement is partly caused by this amnesty law. Granting perpetrators high positions in government inevitably encourage impunity.20 The balance was not found and the necessity occurred to try perpetrators of core international crimes, thus explaining the creation of a special international Court for Sierra Leone in 2002 under a joint agreement signed between the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations, "mandated to try those bearing the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed within the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996”.21 Amnesties in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) After years of violence, in March 2009, the government signed an agreement with the Congrés National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), led by General Laurent Nkunda. The agreement called for amnesty and an amnesty law was signed and promulgated by President Kabila in May 2009.22The law applies to Congolese living in the DRC or abroad and covers acts of war and insurrection committed in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu from June 2003 to the date of promulgation. The amnesty is of limited temporal and geographic scope, and explicitly excludes genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity from its reach. According to the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), it is in practice a blanket amnesty, which established an unrestricted guarantee that many serious crimes will not be prosecuted.23 Any Congolese anywhere is amnestied for acts of war and insurrection in the Kivus, prospectively and retroactively for the time period delineated, but there are no procedures, no conditions and a very loose definition of these crimes. Analysts suggested that "Anyone in jail can wave this as a get-out-of-jail free card, the prosecuting authorities are not even going to think of prosecuting belligerents, let alone FARDC and PNC for crimes they have been committed over the years".24 • Effects on the peace process Eastern Congo remains a theater of military operations with disastrous humanitarian consequences. Fighting continued in the country from January to March 2009, especially between Armed Forces – assisted by Rwandan and Ugandan armed forces – on the one hand, and FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda) and LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), both rebel groups on the other hand. Today, violent armed groups are still present, considerably undermining the peace process in the country. A UN peacekeeping force, MONUSCO is also present in the region, helping national armed forces against these groups.25The Congolese government has placed alleged war criminals in command positions of the FARDC, including Bosco Ntaganda, today prosecuted before the International Criminal Court. • Lessons learned The Amnesty Law strengthened patterns of rewarding violence and crimes perpetrated by rebel groups, Congolese armed forces (FARDC), militias and police. As a consequence, the Congolese population lost confidence in its institutions. Criminal prosecutions at the national and international 20 See Hayner, P. “Negotiating peace in Sierra Leone: Confronting the justice challenge”, December 2007 Report, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and International Center for Transitional Justice; pp.23 and 24. 21 Official website of the SCSL, About, at http://www.sc-sl.org/about.html 23 ICTJ Discussion paper: FOCUS: 2009 DRC AMNESTY LAW AMNESTY MUST NOT EQUAL IMPUNITY ICTJ Discussion paper: FOCUS: 2009 DRC AMNESTY LAW AMNESTY MUST NOT EQUAL IMPUNITY The Accountability Landscape in Eastern DRCAnalysis of the National Legislative and Judicial Response to International Crimes (2009–2014), Sofia Candeias, Luc Côté, Elsa Papageorgiou, and Myriam Raymond-Jetté, July 2015, pp.17-20 24 25 6