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In its first such decision, the International Criminal Court on Friday awarded $250 as "symbolic" damages to each victim of a former Congolese warlord.
The sum was swiftly dismissed as meaningless by those who lost homes and loved ones in a militia attack on their village 14 years ago.
"These individual reparations don't have any symbolic value. Today $250 doesn't mean anything in the DRC," Salomon Kisembo Byaruhanga, a local tribal chief, told AFP.
"Those who will get it will most likely waste it all away on beer in two days," he added, saying it would be far better to rebuild a village or construct a memorial
Worst atrocities
The order was a landmark step for the tribunal, set up in 2002 to prosecute the world's worst atrocities, marking the first time it has awarded individual reparations and placed monetary values on the harm caused by such crimes.
Presiding judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut acknowledged the amount of $250 to each of the 297 victims of Germain Katanga "does not make up for the totality of the crimes", estimating the total damage caused in the 2003 attack at $3.7 million.
But in announcing both collective and individual reparations, he said he hoped it would bring some "measure of relief" and help victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo rebuild their lives.
The ICC sentenced Katanga to 12 years in jail in 2014 after convicting him of five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the February 2003 ethnic attack on Bogoro, a village in troubled Ituri Province.
A public apology
He was accused of supplying weapons to his militia which went on a rampage, shooting and hacking to death with machetes some 200 people.
Katanga, who watched the proceedings by video-link from a jail in Kinshasa where he is on trial on separate charges, was also found liable for $1 million of the total compensation, though the court recognised that he was penniless, or "indigent", and had no home or possessions.
It asked that he consider making a public apology or writing a letter to the victims, or even attending a public reconciliation ceremony.
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