Carla Ferstman 29 V. Victims’ Active Participation in Justice Processes: Applicable Procedural Standards for Victims of Gender-Based Violence With respect to violence against women occurring during conflict, the U.N. Security Council’s resolution 1325, and subsequent resolutions on women, peace, and security all underscore that States must ensure women’s active participation in post-conflict peace-making, peace-building, and reconstruction processes. The active participation of women in defining and implementing solu­ tions is crucial to their empowerment, and a necessary precondition to eradicate marginalisation. Victims’ active participation has also been recognised as a crucial component to justice processes, which include, but are not limited to, reparations processes. In his 2015 report, Pablo de Greiff noted that “the participation of victims, in particular women and girls, in the early stages of debates on the design of reparation programmes contributes to ensuring that serious gender-related violations are not excluded from the range of rights that, if violated, will trigger reparation benefits.”51 Indeed, when done well, justice can be empowering and reparative for victims. It can give them a voice and enable them to be heard by an official decision-making body. The converse is also true. Processes which ignore victims’ concerns and treat them as passive observers tend to have a dele­ terious impact on victims’ well-being and their sense that justice has been achieved. Where victims are not treated with respect, and are subjected to re-traumatising examinations, this can impact their overall experience with the justice process, and can deter others from coming forward.52 As the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has held, “it is essential to provide support to a rape victim from the beginning of the investigation in order to ensure her safety and provide an appro­ priate context to refer to the abuse suffered and to facilitate her participation, as simply and as carefully as possible, in the investigation procedures.”53 This obligation extends not only to the investigation, but throughout any judicial procedure that follows, including reparations. The stigma that surrounds sexual violence can lead to female victims being abandoned by their families and ostracized from their communities, causing victims to hide or isolate themselves. But for some victims of sexual violence, testifying can sometimes be an act of defiance, an act to reclaim power over the events, though an extremely painful process nonetheless. Khadidja Zidane, who testified in the Hissène Habré case about her experiences of rape by Habré himself, explained that after she came back from giving her testimony, she was was threatened with death, physically attacked by strangers in the street, and abused in her own home. “The whole thing is because I went and told the truth. Why shouldn’t I tell the truth? I have every right. An injustice has been done to me. I was not alone. Hissène Habré destroyed all of us. I don’t have anything to lose. I have to speak. I don’t care.”54 After having heard evidence from Khadidja Zidane and other victims of sexual violence, the trial judges added sexual violence to Habré’s charge sheet, and sexual violence was drawn specific attention to in the verdict and in the award for reparations.55 Moreover, the judges determined that the sexual violence perpetrated against the women amounted to torture, crimes against humanity, and sexual slavery. While the conviction and sentence were upheld on 51 Pablo de Greiff (Special Rapporteur), Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-recurrence, ¶ 70, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/30/42 (Sept. 7, 2015). 52 anne -marie De BrouW er, suP ranational Crim inal ProseCution of sexual violenCe : the iCC anD the PraCtiCe of the iCty anD the iCtr 272-275 (2005). 53 Rosendo Cantú et al. v. Mexico, Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs, Inter-Am. Ct. H. R., at ¶ 189 (Aug. 31, 2010). 54 Ruth Maclean, ‘I told my story face to face with Habré’: Courageous Rape Survivors Make History, guarDian (Sept. 18, 2016). 55 Judgment of 30 May 2016, http://www.chambresafricaines.org/pdf/Jugement_complet.pdf