K65m ‘shortage’ stalls Msundwe rape case probe
For three years, Malawi Government has failed to provide K65 million to the Independent Complaints Commission (ICC) to investigate allegations of sexual violence against women in Msundwe on the outskirts of Lilongwe City in 2019.
ICC commissioner Christopher Tukula confirmed in an interview that the investigation is stuck for lack of funding despite his institution doing all necessary preparations, including recruiting female investigators.
The first time we reported on this issue in September 2021, the ICC was looking for K65 million to carry out the probe, which was scheduled to start in October the same year.
an increment
Yesterday, Tukula said: “We wanted an increment on the investigations budget, but our budget line was cut. The only increment they provided was for procurement of vehicles because we have also been having mobility challenges. We were being forced to hire vehicles, which was expensive on our part.”
He said this year, ICC asked for K900 million for its operations, including K65 million for the Msundwe rape investigation, but government allocated K741 million in the budget
Tukula said if ICC takes K65 million from the allocation to undertake the Msundwe investigation, it will not be able to conduct other investigations.
“Since we started we have received 285 complaints and we have concluded about 50. So you can see that if we take a huge sum from the investigations budget for Msundwe investigation, other investigations will suffer,” he said.
The investigation follows contradictory reports from Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and Malawi Police Service, both of which have been made public.
The MHRC report faulted some police officers for allegedly raping some women and girls, but the police’s findings questioned MHRC’s report and considered the rape allegations as “cooked up”. In another story, in this paper, in September 2022 the ICC raised the same issue of funding as holding back progress of the investigation as well as questioning government’s commitment to resolve the issue.
While Ministry of Justice is yet to respond to our questionnaire, Treasury spokesperson Williams Banda said due to fiscal space limitations, ministries, departments and agencies are expected to prioritise “budgetary allocations”.
Human Rights Defenders Coalition chairperson Gift Trapence called on government to fund the investigation, saying lack of money will cripple efforts to probe the matter and serve justice.
After the MHRC report, which recommended the rape victims’ compensation, the Women Lawyers Association, on behalf of the victims, sought legal redress on the matter at the High Court.
The court ruled in favour of the victims, ordered that compensations should be paid to victims and speedy establishment of the ICC to check police’s misconduct.
