Angelina Jolie, goodwill ambassador to the UNHCR, hopes for progress in bringing war criminals to justice.

On
a recent mission for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
I had the opportunity to visit a refugee camp in Chad just across the
border with Sudan. Sitting with a group of refugees, I asked them what
they needed. These were people who had seen family members killed,
neighbours raped, their villages burned and looted, their entire
communities driven from their land. So it was no surprise when people
began listing the things that could improve their lives just a little
bit. Better tents, said one; better access to medical facilities, said
another. But then a teenage boy raised his hand and said, with powerful
simplicity, “Nous voulons un procès.” We want a trial.

A trial
might seem a distant and abstract notion to a young man for whom the
inside of a courtroom is worlds away from the inside of a refugee camp.
But his statement showed a recognition of something elemental: that
accountability is perhaps the only force powerful enough to break the
cycle of violence and retribution that marks so many conflicts.

I
believe 2008 can be the year in which we begin seeking true
accountability and demanding justice for the victims in Darfur and
elsewhere. Through accountability we can begin the process of righting
past wrongs, and even change the behaviour of some of the world’s worst
criminals.

The
international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda have
shown the way in convicting heads of state and generals for genocide
and crimes against humanity. The UN-backed special court for Sierra
Leone has already sentenced three former leaders of a pro-government
militia to jail for war crimes committed during the country’s civil war
in the 1990s.

In Cambodia, the joint UN-Cambodian court to try
top former Khmer Rouge leaders with war crimes and crimes against
humanity has begun calling witnesses. It has taken a long time to get
even this far, but a trial is likely in 2008. In The Hague, the
International Criminal Court (ICC) has begun trials of two of the
Congolese leaders charged with fomenting killings and rapes amid the
violence that has raged there for over a decade.

Make no
mistake, the existence of these trials alone changes behaviour. Seeing
the indictment of Thomas Lubanga and the detention of Germain Katanga
by the ICC brought to mind a trip I had taken to Congo five years ago.
In the Ituri region, where Mr Katanga’s reign of terror had been most
intense, our group attended a meeting of rebel leaders. They had
gathered in a field to discuss the prospects for a peace
agreement—which were not looking very good. The conversation turned
hostile and the situation grew extremely tense. At that point, one of
my colleagues asked for the name of one of the rebels, announcing,
perhaps a bit recklessly, that he was going to pass it along to the ICC.

It
was remarkable: this rebel leader’s whole posture changed from
aggression to conciliation. The ICC had been around for only five
months. It had tried no one. Yet its very existence was enough to
intimidate a man who had been terrorising the population for years.

Ending the cycle of violence
This
is not an isolated example. Accountability has the potential to change
behaviour, to check aggression by those who are used to acting with
impunity. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the ICC, has said that
even genocide is not a crime of passion; it is a calculated decision.
He is right. Common sense tells us that when risks are weighed,
decisions are made differently. When crimes against humanity are
punished consistently and severely, the killers’ calculus will change.

My
hope is that these examples of justice in the name of accountability
will be just a few of the many to come. I hope that the Sudanese
government will hand over the government minister and the janjaweed
militia leader who have been indicted for war crimes by the ICC, and
that the teenager I met in Chad will get to see the trial he seeks. I
hope that those responsible for the atrocities in Darfur will be held
to account, not only for that young man’s sake, but for the world’s.

Only
through justice will we achieve peace. And only when there is peace
will the world’s nearly 39m displaced persons and refugees be able to
return home.

The strong preying upon the weak and the weak, upon
achieving strength, extracting retribution: this is the nature of so
many of the world’s conflicts. The role of aggressor and victim may
alternate over time, the tools of destruction may become more
sophisticated, but little else changes.

Despite the horror I
have seen in my travels, the hopeful lesson I take is that we can begin
to put an end to the cycle of violence and retribution that gives rise
to war criminals and sets forth floods of refugees. Let 2008 be the
year in which we see the principle of accountability put into action.