On 18 July 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber issued a landmark judgment upholding a USD 10,000,000 collective reparations award for victims in the case against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. In this second—and hopefully final—Appeals judgment on reparations in the Lubanga case, the Appeals Chamber largely confirmed the methodology that Trial Chamber II employed in its 15 December 2017 decision setting the amount of Lubanga’s liability for reparations (“Lubanga Reparations Award”). At the same time, the Appeals Chamber reversed Trial Chamber II’s rejection of 48 victim applicants for reparations, who will now be entitled to re-apply for collective reparations benefits before the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV).
Overall, we suggest that the 18 July 2019 Lubanga judgment confirms the large discretion that Trial Chambers retain in choosing a procedure and methodology to calculate reparations awards and determine a convicted person’s liability for reparations. At the same time, it makes clear that such discretion is not unfettered. To this end, the judgment presents several “ground rules” that Trial Chambers must follow, moving forward.
This piece outlines five procedure-related takeaways that arise from the Appeals Chamber’s 18 July 2019 Lubanga judgment, which will impact the structure and function of the ICC’s evolving reparations regime. By situating the Lubanga judgment alongside judgments recently issued in the Al Mahdi and Katanga cases, we aim to highlight points of convergence and divergence in the case law. Because we do not survey all questions asked and answered in the 18 July 2019 Lubanga judgment, we hope that this piece will complement syntheses of the judgment that other commentators have produced in recent weeks (for instance, see Wairagala Wakabi’s post here; see also Luke Moffett’s and Janet Anderson’s recent commentaries here).
