Practices of Reparations in International Criminal Justice

""What are 'reparations'?", asks Yang Oun when a local Cambodian NGO worker tries to inform him about the reparations mandate of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a criminal tribunal set up by the Cambodian government and the United Nations in the capital Phnom Penh. Yang Oun belongs to Cambodia's ethnic Vietnamese minority and resides in one of the many picturesque but poor floating villages on the Tonle Sap Lake, roughly two and half hours drive - and another hour boat ride - north of Phnom Penh. During its reign 40 years ago, the Khmer Rouge persecuted him and his community. Yang Oun lost many family members and only survived the atrocities because he fled to Vietnam. Years later he decided to participate in the trials "to tell everyone about our suffering". Reparations were initially not on his mind, but is a field in the form that he is required to fill in for his application. My Cambodian colleague patiently assists him, as Yang Oun has never learned the Khmer script. I accompany this local NGO's field mission in my capacity as an Advisor of the German development cooperation (GIZ) to Cambodia's largest human rights NGO coalition"--