The Special Criminal Court and the challenge of criminal accountability in the Central African Republic

Abstract

States which encounter massive human rights violations usually implement various mechanisms of achieving accountability. There exists documented evidence of conflict-related international crimes in the Central African Republic (CAR). Still, the perpetrators enjoy impunity as no appropriate measures were adopted to guarantee criminal accountability. The Special Criminal Court (SCC) was established in the CAR in 2015 as a hybrid criminal accountability mechanism. This article with the aid of a qualitative method and a narrative approach aims at investigating the activities of the SCC in the fight against the culture of impunity in a country experiencing persistent human rights violations. As conflict and impunity persist in the socially and politically unstable CAR, a comprehensive synopsis of the SCC and a preliminary assessment of the court and its challenges seven years after creation constitute a domain of investigation that urgently requires a deeper investigation to halt impunity, recurrent hostilities and human rights violations. Why has impunity and violations persisted in the CAR despite the creation of the SCC? The paper identifies critical factors to the success of the SCC, based on previous experiments with hybrid courts. The outcome of this research reveal that the fragile security situation in the country and other factors significantly hinder the court’s objective of serving justice and contributing to durable peace in the CAR.