The Price of Justice

For Cambodia that price is 56 million dollars. Too much? Sure seems like it for the folks riding water buffaloes into work and spending less than a dollar a day to get by. But that is not really a fair comparison. How much does a trial like this cost normally? Is Cambodia getting good value here, or is this really just a money pit. Well it turns out that 56 million is actually pretty skint for international justice.

The Hariri trial in Lebanon, another Hybrid court, has a budget of about 44 million dollars. (at least according to statements from the potential prosecutors) That is 44 million to hold a trial for the death of one person. In Sierra Leone the budget has been set at 104 million over 4 years, while the court in the Hague is spending 100 million each year. This from a report in the American Society for International Law :

The cost of the Special Court is estimated at U.S. $22 million for its first year of operation, compared to the ICTY and ICTR whose annual budgets each exceed $90 million. This estimated cost does not, however, include funding for detention facilities, investigations, translators, or defense counsel. (10) While Security Council Resolution 1315 had suggested the mechanism of voluntary contributions to fund the Special Court, the Secretary-General has opted instead for assessed contributions from U.N. member states (in which case the United States will be assessed twenty-five percent of the costs) on the grounds that "voluntary contributions will not provide the assured and continuous source of funding which would be required to appoint the judges, the Prosecutor and the Registrar, to contract the services of all administrative and support staff and to purchase the necessary equipment." (11)

Yet most of the recent press here has been quick to call the Khmer Rouge Trials the next coming of UNTAC. Seems like a report just released from Open Society Justice initiative has a slightly opposing view:

Funding woes hindering KR tribunal:

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AFP) - Cambodia needs at least double the money currently budgeted to try former Khmer Rouge leaders, a prominent legal organization has said, warning that the "unrealistically thin" funding was already hurting the tribunal's work.

So far 56.3-million-dollars has been requested for the long-awaited tribunal, but Cambodia and the United Nations have yet to secure even that amount, with the tribunal facing a shortfall of several million dollars.

However, the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a legal reform group which monitors the tribunal, said that even if fully funded, tribunal staff will be forced "to make decisions based solely, or predominantly, on financial considerations".

Condemned for being a money pit one day and woefully underfunded the next. The true cost of Justice remains a mystery.