Now You See Them, Now You Don’t: Court-Appointed Experts, Wartime Reparations, and the drc v Uganda Case

Abstract

One intersection between scholarship and practice in international humanitarian law is observable in international litigation concerning violations of the law of war. An interesting example in this regard recently arose in the case by the Democratic Republic of the Congo against Uganda for war-related claims. At the reparations phase, the Court decided not to rely solely on the submissions of the Parties, but to task certain scholars and other experts to answer evidentiary questions. Yet, when the Court’s judgment was issued in February 2022, the role of these experts turned out to be almost negligible, with one significant exception. The overall lesson may be that – while the work of scholars can be highly important for claims practice relating to international humanitarian law – it has its limits, such as when proving and quantifying mass civil injury resulting from a lengthy and complex armed conflict.