Towards Effective Accountability: Enhancing Tanzania’s Framework for Prosecuting War Crimes under International Humanitarian Law

In this research paper, Tanzania's legal & institutional systems for prosecuting war crimes according to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) are studied. The research examines whether Tanzania's domestic legislation meets its obligations under both the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The methodology employed was doctrinal legal research with a comparative analysis of Uganda and South Africa as additional sources of information. The analysis shows that Tanzania does not have any separate statutes that criminalise war crimes; rather, it depends on the general part of its Penal Code to address these types of crimes. The general provisions of the Penal Code also fail to capture the contextual and legal elements of these crimes because they do not contain many of the elements required to constitute an international crime. Some other issues identified by the study include a lack of provisions for universal jurisdiction, very little guidance from case law on the principles of international criminal law, and poor institutional mechanisms for conducting investigations and/or prosecutions of international crimes. Unlike Uganda and South Africa, which have both implemented effective accountability mechanisms for international crimes with laws and organisations established specifically for that purpose, Tanzania’s current framework does not provide sufficient protection of victims’ rights to ensure compliance with Tanzania’s international obligations as articulated in the UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Through this comparative analysis, it was determined that to effectively prosecute the perpetration of war crimes, a country must possess clear legislative provisions, specialised institutions, and a committed political will. This article further concluded that Tanzania’s current legal framework is inadequate to fully comply with its obligations set forth in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Specifically, it recommends that Tanzania enact a comprehensive International Crimes Act establishing the creation of specialised prosecutorial methods and judicial mechanisms to increase accountability for war crimes through greater regional coordination among neighbouring countries.