the Court
[para 17]. They argue that “these are mostly the charges and fees of Counsel
for the beneficiaries and of the MBDHP during the entire juridical procedure in Burkina
Faso and in Tanzania’ [at the Seat of the Court].
75. According to the Applicants, “the fees include: the total amount owed by the client to
the Counsel for services rendered by the latter; the costs and outlay corresponding to the
costs indicated by Counsel in accomplishing his mission, and outlay
paid on behalf of
the client ...,; emoluments corresponding to taxes and charges received by Counsel for
procedural acts, in accordance with tariff fixed by the instruments in force”.
76. The Applicants submit that their Counsel have been working on the case since 1999
“with all political, financial, moral, etc.) toll it has taken on them” and therefore prayed the
Court “to arbitrate these fees to the sum of twenty-five (25) million CFA
F exclusive of
related taxes and emoluments.”
77. \In the Corrigendum on the Reparations, the Applicants however indicate that the
figures contained in the Brief are inexact because they do not conform to the agreements
signed between the two lawyers and the beneficiaries in 2010, based on the Indicative
Scale of Costs and Fees of Lawyers of Burkina Faso. Consequently, they pray the Court
“to adjudicate these fees at the sum of twenty-five million (25) CFA F per family, subject
to the related taxes and emoluments as had been approved by them”...thus bringing “the
total sum to a hundred (100) million CFA F”.
78. In its Brief in Response, the Respondent State, after analysing the Indicative Scale of
Costs and Fees of Lawyers of Burkina Faso submitted by the Applicants, argued that the
Agreements on lawyers’ fees referred to by the Applicants, “are complaisant
as they do
not state the well-known fees’. It further argues that lawyers’ fees are part of damages,
which in its view, are the only claims made by the Applicants in the instant case; but
argues that if, by an unlikely chance, the Court agrees that the Counsel fees for the
Applicants are part of damages, then “the sum of twenty-five (25) million claimed by the
said Counsel for each victim's family is exorbitant and out of proportion with the socioeconomic realities of Burkina Faso”. The Respondent State “believes that the sum of
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