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Uganda at a Crossroads: Narrowing the Amnesty?
Abstract
In exploring the changing role of amnesty in Uganda, this paper will begin by analysing the background to the conflict in northern Uganda, before exploring in Part 3 the crimes and motivations that have characterised this conflict, including crimes committed by both the LRA and the Ugandan state. Subsequently, in Part 4, the current amnesty arrangements will be analysed, including how the amnesty was enacted, implemented and subsequently amended, and the impact that it has had to date within Uganda. The conflict between the Amnesty Act and the indictments issued by the International Criminal Court will be explored in Part 5. Part 6 will then discuss the peace negotiations at Juba and Part 7 will provide an overview of the various transitional justice approaches that were negotiated in the Agreement and Annexure on Accountability and Reconciliation. Finally, some suggestions will be made on the role that amnesty can play during the political transition, if the peace agreement is signed by Joseph Kony and President Museveni.
... Previous research shows that whatever the transitional justice mechanism adopted for the sake of peace, justice and reconciliation after a protracted civil conflict, it always has a tremendous impact on the victims of mass violence (Brounéus, 2010;Bloomfield et al., 2003;Joe Edet;B. E. Kooffreh, 2018;Blaauw, 2002;Karstedt, 2010;Carlson, 2012;Hodzic, 2010;Heynes, 2010;Mallinder, 2009;Villa-Vicencio, 2010;Haldemann, 2011). Survivors suffer trauma from the past and either see their narratives exposed or suppressed, affecting either positively or negatively reconciliation processes. ...
... Although this is true, the literature assumes that whatever mechanism helps victims of violence to overcome pain from past events 6 benefits processes of peacebuilding and reconciliation because they are the core of these processes (Joe Edet;B. E. Kooffreh, 2018;Wenzel et al. 2007;Blaauw, 2002;Karstedt, 2010;Carlson, 2012;Hodzic, 2010;Heynes, 2010;Mallinder, 2009;Villa-Vicencio, 2010;Haldemann, 2011). Therefore, it is crucial to address the victims' needs to reach sustainable peace. ...
... Accordingly, their conscious understanding of the environment's opportunity structures and capabilities greatly impacted their perceptions and actions. Going back to the debate amnesty versus justice, if arguments contest against 'too much truth' as affecting peacebuilding and even the victims' well being (Cohen, 2009, 28;Brounéus, 2010), and others hope for the chance to reveal and account for past atrocities (Hodzic, 2010, Mallinder, 2009, what is it that influences the victims' views about blanket amnesty, and why do they perceive amnesty differently? Considerably, this study wants to glean the victims' consciousness of the political environment and capabilities which I argue is determinant for their views about blanket amnesty as part of the transitional justice process that inflicts such an overwhelming impact in their lives (Brounéus, 2010). ...
How do victims of violence perceive blanket amnesties as part of transitional justice mechanisms in war-torn societies? The amnesty law is critical for conflict resolutions and post-conflict reconciliation processes. Governments and third parties use amnesties as a transitional justice instrument to end the violence because it ensures that conflict leaders will accept to engage in peace talks. However, a blanket amnesty restrains the victims’ narratives of past atrocities in the transitional justice process in exchange for peace. The amnesty in Angola illustrates this policy. The attempt to balance past and future avoids the risks of too much truth-telling from breaking peace negotiations. In a situation where peace and justice compete, this paper considers the victims as agents in the process.
To this end, I enquire about the victims’ views about blanket amnesty. To find out, I explore the victims’ perceptions of the blanket amnesty in Angola and their engagement in transitional justice processes through their self-awareness. Specifically, how they apprehend their capabilities and social-political environment opportunities to change. For this purpose, I used Bandura’s self-efficacy theory of human agency to glean the victims’ consciousness of the political environment and capabilities. I argue that the victims’ self-efficacy level determines their perceptions of blanket amnesty and engagement as part of the transitional justice process that inflicts such an overwhelming impact on their lives. This study offers a micro-level interdisciplinary perspective to the transitional justice study field.
... During the subsequent Juba peace talks, LRA leader Joseph Kony and the LRA negotiators frequently described the warrants as an impediment to Kony signing the final peace agreement. 8 These peace talks eventually collapsed, and although this may have occurred for multiple reasons, some commentators point to the ICC"s arrest warrants as a contributing factor. Overall, however, it is too early to draw conclusions on the impact of international criminal trials or amnesties on peace initiatives as most discussions rely on anecdotal evidence and little empirical, comparative analysis has been conducted. ...
The end of the Cold War marked the start of a new era in global politics in which legalism and the rule of law became increasingly important in international relations and the number of international legal institutions grew. In particular, international criminal law, which had largely been moribund during the previous decades, was revived with the creation of the ad hoc tribunals, the hybrid courts and the International Criminal Court (ICC). These developments were hailed by human rights activists and the international legal community as important steps towards ending the cultures of impunity that so often prevail in the aftermath of mass violence. However, despite these developments, amnesty laws continue to be introduced in many countries to shield individuals or groups from legal sanctions, even for the most serious crimes. As a result, amnesties remain a contentious, yet vibrant issue within international criminal law. This chapter will investigate their controversial status by analysing relevant treaty provisions, customary international law and the statutes and jurisprudence of international criminal courts.
The conflict in Northern Uganda between the Government of Uganda (GoU) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) started in 1986. The conflict was subsequently referred by the GoU to the ICC in December 2003. This chapter examines this conflict, the various peace efforts made in managing it and the involvement of the ICC in the conflict. The focus of the chapter is on the nexus between the ICC’s involvement and the peace process in the country. Hence, the central issue examined is whether the ICC is facilitating the peace process or stalling/complicating it or having little or no impacts on it. The conclusions are that the ICC is contributing to the peace process in the country by promoting accountability to the law and by contributing to deterrence through its actions and activities in Uganda. The study also found that the ICC is not making much positive impact on reconciliation, because the problems that led to the conflict are deep-rooted and linked to the political and economic development of the country, and needed to be tackled from many perspectives. The impact of the ICC’s involvement on victims’ rights is deemed too minimal to have any significant influence on the peace process in the country.
This article analyzes the first peace talks to take place against the backdrop of an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation: the Juba Talks between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda (2006–2008). Drawing on field research and original source material, it departs from well-worn peace versus justice debates and provides new empirical material to explore how the presence of the court shaped domestic political dynamics at Juba. It argues that at the level of broad rhetoric, the presence of the court created significant discord between negotiating parties. On a practical level, however, it created space for consensus, but not the type envisaged by international justice promoters. The court came to be seen by both sides as an intervention that needed to be contained and controlled. This resulted in the politically expedient Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation, which showcased a transitional justice “tool-kit,” but was based on a shared desire to evade the jurisdiction of international criminal justice. Given its practical complexity, the transitional justice agreement was ultimately rejected by Joseph Kony, who became increasingly distrustful of his own negotiating team at Juba. In findings relevant to other contexts, the article presents in-depth analyses of how domestic political dynamics around the ICC intervention produced a national transitional justice framework designed to protect both parties from war crimes accountability.
Child soldiers and their involvement in armed conflict have been addressed by a variety of different non-prosecutorial transitional justice mechanisms in different countries. However, these mechanisms have in the past largely disregarded child soldiers’ active participation in violence and thus neglected the need for accountability resulting therefrom. One explanation for this finding lies in the narrow framing of accountability in terms of retributive criminal justice. The second chapter begins with a brief introduction to the concept of transitional justice, before discussing a variety of non-prosecutorial transitional justice mechanisms. First, the treatment of child soldiers by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission is analyzed. Subsequently, the chapter addresses child soldiers’ participation in traditional processes, including both justice processes as well as cleansing processes. It then turns towards exploring the issue of child soldiers and reparations, focusing on the Lubanga-case at the International Criminal Court, before addressing amnesty processes for child soldiers in Mozambique, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Liberia. Lastly, the chapter deals with child soldiers and institutional reform, concentrating on child soldiers’ participation in Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration processes.
On April 20th 1995, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) entered the trading centre of Atiak and after an intense offensive, defeated the Ugandan army stationed there. Hundreds of men, women, students and young children were then rounded up by the LRA and marched a short distance into the bush until they reached a river. There, they were separated into two groups according to their sex and age. After being lectured for their alleged collaboration with the Government, the LRA commander in charge ordered his soldiers to open fire three times on a group of about 300 civilian men and boys as women and young children witnessed the horror. This report recounts the events of the massacre.
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Since 1986, the Acholi people of northern Uganda have lived in the crossfire of a violent civil war, with the Lord’s Resistance Army and other groups fighting the Ugandan government. Acholi have been murdered, maimed, and driven into displacement. Thousands of children have been abducted and forced to fight. Many observers have perceived Acholiland and northern Uganda to be an exception in contemporary Uganda, which has been celebrated by the international community for its increased political stability and particularly for its fight against AIDS. These observers tend to portray the Acholi as war-prone, whether because of religious fanaticism or intractable ethnic hatreds. In Living with Bad Surroundings, Sverker Finnström rejects these characterizations and challenges other simplistic explanations for the violence in northern Uganda. Foregrounding the narratives of individual Acholi, Finnström enables those most affected by the ongoing “dirty war” to explain how they participate in, comprehend, survive, and even resist it.
Finnström draws on fieldwork conducted in northern Uganda between 1997 and 2006 to describe how the Acholi—especially the younger generation, those born into the era of civil strife—understand and attempt to control their moral universe and material circumstances. Structuring his argument around indigenous metaphors and images, notably the Acholi concepts of good and bad surroundings, he vividly renders struggles in war and the related ills of impoverishment, sickness, and marginalization. In this rich ethnography, Finnström provides a clear-eyed assessment of the historical, cultural, and political underpinnings of the civil war while maintaining his focus on Acholi efforts to achieve “good surroundings,” viable futures for themselves and their families.
Uncertainty abounds concerning the 19-year conflict in Northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government. Two questions have received the most attention and could have the most bearing on efforts to resolve the conflict: first, why has the Ugandan government been unable or unwilling to end the war for nineteen years? Second, why has the LRA chosen to use extreme violence against the Acholi instead of trying to build popular support? First, this article addresses these questions, arguing that the debate has failed to take into account the political agency of the Acholi peasantry in the conflict and the relations between the peasantry and government, on the one hand, and the peasantry and the LRA, on the other. By putting the Acholi peasantry and its relations with government and rebels at the center of the analysis, the longevity of the war and the tendency by both rebels and government to use violence against the peasantry can be made sense of as a consequence of both sides' failure to realize an effective popular mobilization among the Acholi. Second, the article traces historically these failures of popular mobilization and the paths by which both the Ugandan government and the LRA came to see the population as a threat and potential enemy instead of as a potential support base. Third, by putting the people at the center of the analysis of the conflict, the groundwork is laid for putting the people at the center of the resolution of the conflict, transcending the current tendency of conflict resolution agendas to focus only on elites, treating the civilian population as passive bystanders or victims.
Through the story of a former rebel fighter, this article examines some of the justice and reconciliation challenges in northern Uganda today. While talks between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and Government of Uganda have generated the best chance for peace in the 20-year conflict, the International Criminal Court's indictment of rebel leaders threatens this process. The rebels refuse to disarm if indicted; the Chief Prosecutor refuses to withdraw indictments as he believes withdrawal will foster impunity. To resolve this dilemma, local cultural and religious leaders advocate adapting local justice and reconciliation mechanisms to the situation, arguing that these will both hold rebels accountable and achieve peace. However, little is known about local justice processes or their potential to foster reconciliation in war-torn northern Uganda. On the basis of participatory research (2004–2006) with war-affected persons, the article seeks to address this gap, illustrating the potential and limitations of such locally relevant mechanisms.
Peace talks have commenced between the Ugandan Government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has committed countless atrocities during the nearly 20 years it has tried to overthrow the government. The head of the LRA, Joseph Kony, has been offered amnesty by the government in the hope that peace will ensue. This raises the question of whether a government should forego the pursuit of justice in order to prevent further bloodshed.
This article examines the role that amnesty and traditional practices play in fostering justice and reconciliation in northern Uganda. Although the twenty-year conflict involving the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda has not yet come to an end and peace talks are still ongoing, many former LRA rebels have begun to return to their communities after taking advantage of the amnesty offered by the government of Uganda. Consequently, reintegration, accountability, and reconciliation are currently prominent legal issues in northern Uganda. Literature on this subject, however, mainly touches upon how the amnesty process and the peace talks are in tension with the International Criminal Court’s pending arrest warrants for LRA leaders. This article, by contrast, argues that given the shortcomings of the amnesty process and the traditional practices, a truth commission and a reparations process could play a critical role in northern Uganda’s transition from conflict to peace.
Using the Nikiforov–Uvarov (NU) method, the bound state energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the PT{\cal P{\cal T}}-symmetric and non-Hermitian modified Woods–Saxon (WS) model potential with the real and complex-valued energy levels are
obtained in terms of the Jacobi polynomials. According to the PT{\cal P}{\cal T}-symmetric quantum mechanics, we exactly solved the time-independent Schrödinger equation with same potential for the s-states
and also for any l-state as well. It is shown that the results are in good agreement with the ones obtained before.
After a period of mass atrocity committed at the hands of the State, societies are left trying to find a way to deal with what has taken place. Many States have attempted to utilise a form of the truth commission as an instrument of social learning and political change. Acknowledgement is central to this process. Such commissions in both Uganda and Chile were tempered with societal realities and met with varying degrees of success.
This article aims at exemplifying war's violation of cosmologies as well as of people, and the ways in which experiences of war and violence are domesticated in cosmological terms as strategies of coping. I argue that the diverging experiences of the anthropologist, and of her/his assistants and informants, can fruitfully be communicated through an intercultural understanding of the conflict at issue, and of its local implications. Such a communication can provide us with a framework for dealing with the uncertainties of research in war.
On December 16, 2003, Uganda referred the situation concerning the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was the first time that a state party had invoked Articles 13(a) and 14 of the Rome Statute in order to vest the Court with jurisdiction.
For both Uganda and the ICC, the case presented an important opportunity. For Uganda, the referral was an attempt to engage an otherwise aloof international community by transforming the prosecution of LRA leaders into a litmus test for the much celebrated promise of global justice. Since 1986, LRA atrocities have wreaked havoc on the Acholi people of northern Uganda. Given the absence of any vital national interests, influential states have not been inclined either to pressure Sudan to stop harboring the LRA or to help government forces confront the insurgents. Instead, the burden was placed on Uganda to negotiate a peaceful settlement with a ruthless, cult-like insurgency. The imprimatur of international criminal justice, sought through the referral to the ICC, was a means of thrusting this long-forgotten African war back onto the international stage.
The conflict in northern Uganda is about to enter its twentieth year since it began in 1986. As at the time of writing, there is no sign that the conflict is about to come to an end. For a long time, the government has tried the military option to end the conflict but to no avail. However, recently the government under pressure from local and international civil society organizations and the Acholi population opted to talk peace with the rebels. The proponents of peaceful methods to end the conflict have mooted the Acholi traditional reconciliation mechanisms of * Kasaija Apuuli has obtained qualifications at several universities: Makerere (B.A. 34 Mato oput and Gomo tong, and the government instituted amnesty to try and lure the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) from the bush. In their efforts, the peaceful methods proponents have incessantly campaigned against the on-going International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations into the LRA activities. Meanwhile however the LRA has continued to commit egregious international crimes, which its top leadership must answer for. Whilst the abducted and conscripted LRA foot soldiers (mainly children) may be amnestied, customary international law demands that the top leadership of the LRA must be punished for the jus cogens crimes that have been and continue to be committed in the conflict.
The processes of transitional justice and social reconstruction aim to repair the social elements of a society. Countries devise mechanisms for handling past and current human rights violations. The manner in which these kinds of mechanisms have been used in addressing such crimes as well as the appropriate order in which these mechanisms should be used is considered here. A myriad of mechanisms have been applied to the case of Uganda and are examined.
When we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters.
—Missouri v. Holland (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., J.) As the International Criminal Court (ICC) moves from an exhilarating idea to a carefully negotiated document and finally to an operational institution, the cogency of its conception will be tested by the manifold realities of international politics, not the least of which will be the practical and financial limits those realities may place upon investigation and prosecution. The drafters of the Rome Statute benefited from important previous experiments—the Nuremberg Tribunal and the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. But once the Court is launched, the predecessors and prototypes that were so helpful in the drafting stages will be of less and less assistance. The ICC must operate in a substantially different context than the earlier efforts, and the problems it will encounter (and already is encountering) will be different from and may prove more formidable than those facing its prototypes.
This article aims at exemplifying war’s violation of cosmologies as well as of people, and the ways in which experiences of war and violence are domesticated in cosmological terms as strategies of coping. I argue that the diverging experiences of the anthropologist, and of her/his assistants and informants, can fruitfully be communicated through an intercultural understanding of the conflict at issue, and of its local implications. Such a communication can provide us with a framework for dealing with the uncertainties of research in war.
Cet article examine le mouvement de l'esprit divin d'Alice Lakwena qui apparut en Ouganda entre 1987 et 1989. L'histoire popularisée d'Alice, telle que racontée par la presse occidentale en particulier, a ignoré les contextes historiques et sociaux essentiels à la compréhension des forces qui ont permis Pavènement d'Alice et de ses adeptes. La possession spirituelle révélée par Alice Lakwena prit des formes bien connues par les peuples de ces régions de l'Ouganda. Par ailleurs, les troubles socio-politiques de la fin des années 1980 eurent une influence importante sur les actions d'Alice et ont servi à déterminer un ensemble complet de questions avec lesquelles sa spiritualité allait être associée. Ces faits sont apparents si Ton examine les actions d'Alice elle-même et si Ton reconnait que d'autres médiums étaient actifs dans la même région à la même époque. Ces médiums contribuerent à établir un sens de responsabilité sociale alors même que l'Etat avait perdu sa crédibilité avant de s'effondrer. Sorcellerie et pratiques magiques étaient perçues comme la principale cause de la mortalité. Ces médiums étaient influencés par des concepts moraux Chrétiens. Comme la divination était devenue étroitement liée à PEglise cadiolique, Alice et d'autres médiums purent réunir un grand nombre d'adeptes et attirer les représentants d'une grande variété de couches sociales. Le cas d'Alice Lakwena est fascinant et riche en enseignements, non pas seulement par sa nou-veauté, mais par le fait qu'il combine des formes anciennes et récentes et assure une continuité avec le passé et avec des processus sociaux plus vastes, tout en apportant des réponses aux nouveaux troubles sociaux et à ses traumatismes.
In the aftermath of a period of mass atrocity at the hands of the state, many societies struggle to find a way to repair the damage caused to the physical infrastructure in terms of things like roads, hospitals, and schools. Yet the social infrastructure is also often badly damaged. One mechanism often employed in such cases is the truth commission, which can act to foster sustainable development on many different levels, as well as social trust. When Yoweri Museveni and the NRM acceded to power in Uganda in 1986, one of their first acts was to establish the Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights to look into the abuses which had been perpetrated from 1961 until that time. The Commission, however, was endowed with neither proper funding nor political support. The social infrastructure, therefore, was left in a state of flux. This paper provides an analysis of the many constraints faced by the Commission and of its relative failure to provide a platform for improving the social infrastructure.
Unlike other war crimes tribunals, the International Criminal Court aspires to prosecute grave atrocities on a global scale. Yet more than seven years after its establishment, the ICC has so far targeted suspects only from Africa. This has been seized upon by opponents—particularly Sudanese President al-Bashir, who faces an ICC arrest warrant—as evidence of a neocolonial vendetta against the Continent. Nicholas Waddell and Phil Clark recognize the actual reasons for, as well as the problematic nature of, the ICC's current geographical focus.
The primary aim of their edited volume is to delve into the dynamics of the ICC's intervention in Africa by deepening the debate on the Court's effect on peace processes and domestic rule of law. In doing so, Courting Conflict?—comprising nine short essays by leading NGO specialists and several noted Africa scholars—skillfully moves beyond polemic to provide highly informative and balanced perspectives on the ICC's challenges in Africa. Although its first trial had not started by the time of the book's March 2008 publication, the ICC's presence was already being deeply felt through its investigations and arrest warrants. This presence, the editors write, generated "tremendous controversy" (7), particularly in regard to efforts to end the war in northern Uganda.
Three of the nine essays focus on the peace versus justice dilemma. Nick Grono and Adam O'Brien provide a compelling overview that demonstrates the ways the ICC can threaten or bolster peace at different stages of the negotiating process. Contrary to early warnings that the ICC would destroy the prospects of a settlement in Uganda, Grono and O'Brien argue that the Court's intervention, in conjunction with other factors, gave the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) facing ICC warrants the incentive to engage in serious peace negotiations with the Ugandan government. However, the authors further argue that these warrants became a major obstacle to a final settlement, given the LRA's refusal of any deal that would expose its leaders to ICC prosecution. This illustrates a fundamental point advanced by Grono and O'Brien, namely that at times difficult choices have to be made between peace and justice.
Another essay adroitly argues that the LRA/government talks should not be evaluated only by whether they brought the long-running LRA rebellion to an end. Instead, Marieke Wierda and Michael Otim highlight the importance of the innovative features of the negotiation process that provide for domestic and traditional justice mechanisms to complement (and perhaps replace) the controversial ICC arrest warrants. For Wierda and Otim, the ICC's major achievement has been to prod the government and LRA to recognize the need to address the issue of accountability during the peace negotiations: the debate in northern Uganda "has not been whether to address accountability, but rather how it should be done" (23).
The importance of employing a flexible and integrated policy that allows for diverse approaches to accountability issues, including forms that pay greater attention to victims, is a central theme of Graeme Simpson's essay. In contrast to other international tribunals, the ICC allows for significant victim participation and even reparations. Mariana Goetz's essay assesses the obstacles and challenges that may prevent the ICC from fulfilling its promise to address victim concerns. Tim Allen critically examines the claims made about the efficacy of traditional justice ceremonies in northern Uganda as well as the ways in which these rituals have been altered and conveniently backed by domestic and international actors.
How the ICC's need for state cooperation shapes its relationship with African states is the subject of penetrating essays by Phil Clark and Alex de Waal. Clark criticizes Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo for his cautious approach that pragmatically avoids indicting would-be Ugandan and Congolese government suspects. While recognizing that the nascent Court has an interest in working with these states, Clark argues that the failure to confront government atrocities undermines the ICC's legitimacy in the eyes of victims. De Waal finds virtue in Moreno-Ocampo's initial caution toward the Sudanese government in which he indicted two mid-level suspects tied to state-sponsored atrocities in Darfur. This was a...
The Ugandan referral of its situation to the ICC raises some interesting legal issues that merit examination. As demonstrated in the current study, the acts committed during the current con flict in Uganda meet the requirements of the ICC jurisdiction ratione materiae, however, the problem remains that most of the acts were committed or were initiated before the Statute's entry into force. As the Court has a speci fied temporal jurisdiction, it is clear that the Court would lack jurisdiction over those acts committed before July 1, 2002. However, the question that remains is whether acts that commenced before the July 1, 2002 and continue after that date would be considered by the Court.Given the fact that Uganda is both the territorial state and the state of nationality (as deduced from section 1.1) an unanticipated situation, some legal arguments come into play. The main issue that arises is that the self-referral implies a sort of waiver of the State to exercise complementarity. Would this be legally acceptable? And what are the consequences if the Court accepted this waiver? To what extent does such acceptance affect other admissibility provisions including the application of Article 17?
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has created a pervasive climate of fear in northern Uganda. This study addresses the purpose of this conduct. Diverging from the traditional ‘greed-grievance’ approach to the study of new wars, the LRA's behaviour is analyzed from a strategic perspective. Specifically, the article focuses on the LRA's use of mutilation, abduction, surprise, and unpredictable attacks. The conclusion is that the LRA is strategically using fear as a force multiplier, to further its organizational survival, and as a way to fight a political ‘dirty war’.
War has ravaged Acholiland in northern Uganda since 1986. The Ugandan army is fighting the Lord's Resistance Movement/Army (LRM/A) rebels. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the article aims at exemplifying the ways in which non-combatant people's experiences of war and violence are domesticated in cosmological terms as strategies of coping, and it relates tales of wars in the past to experiences of violent death and war in the present. There has been a politicized debate in Uganda over whether or not the LRM/A rebels have the elders' ceremonial warfare blessing. In sketching this debate, the article interprets the possible warfare blessing - which some informants interpreted as having turned into a curse on Acholiland - as a critical event that benefits from further deliberation, regardless of its existence or non-existence. It is argued that no warfare blessing can be regarded as the mere utterance of words. Rather, a blessing is performed within the framework of the local moral world. It is finally argued that the issue of the warfare blessing is a lived consequence of the conflict, but, nevertheless, cannot be used as an explanatory model for the cause of the conflict.
On 13 October 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber II unsealed the warrants of arrest for five senior leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Uganda since July 2002. While these warrants were yet to be executed, the Ugandan government entered negotiations with the LRA/M rebels. As a result Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, disregarding the ICC arrest warrants, announced a ‘total amnesty’ for the LRA combatants in July 2006 on the condition that the rebels renounced terrorism and accepted peace. Following the amnesty offer, an agreement on cessation of hostilities between the Ugandan government and the LRA/M was concluded with effect from 29 August 2006. This article considers the question whether a ‘total amnesty’ to individuals indicted by the ICC may be binding upon the ICC.
Since the late 1980s, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a spiritualist rebel group with no clear political agenda, has abducted tens of thousands of children and adults to serve as porters and soldiers. Experience of forced conscription into the LRA is traumatic and varies in scope and intensity. Children and youth - some as young as 7 and 8 years old - have been forced to mutilate and kill civilians, including members of their own families and communities. In 1994, a group of parents of abducted children to establish the Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), a reception center in Gulu that provides medical care, counseling, and a number of other services. More than 20,000 children and youth have since passed through GUSCO and other reception centers throughout northern Uganda.In December 2005, the Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations launched The Database Project to better document abduction and help improve the capacity of 8 reception centers in the northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, Apac, and Lira to collect and analyze information about former LRA abductees. At the time, these centers were still providing housing and care to hundreds of children and youth. This report presents the findings of the project, which analyzes the overall incidence of abduction based on those data and provides recommendations aimed at improving the process of reintegrating former LRA abductees into their communities.
For nearly two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a war against the people of Northern Uganda. The group’s conflict with government forces has received little international attention, even though as many as 1.6 million civilians have been displaced and now languish in dozens of squalid camps throughout the countryside. In recent years, several researchers have conducted qualitative studies of the factors influencing peace and justice considerations in the north, primarily comprising interviews with Ugandan government officials, humanitarian workers, traditional and religious leaders, former LRA members, and others. These studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of the challenges policymakers face in their efforts to end years of war. Yet most research has not included population-based data that represent the spectrum of attitudes and opinions of those most affected by the violence. This report seeks to fill that void.The report presents the findings of a study conducted by researchers from the Human Rights Center (HRC), University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Payson Center of Tulane University and Makerere University Institute of Public Health. The findings are based on the preliminary analysis of quantitative data collected from cross-sectional survey of 2,585 individuals residing in the four selected directs in northern Uganda - Gulu and Kitgum (both Acholi districts), and Lira and Soroti (both non-Acholi districts) - between April 20 and May 2, 2005. The specific objectives of the survey were to: 1) Measure the overall exposure to violence as a result of war and human rights abuses in Northern Uganda since 1987; 2) Understand the immediate needs and concerns of residents of towns, villages, and internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Northern Uganda; 3) Capture opinions and attitudes about specific transitional justice mechanisms, including trials, traditional justice, truth commissions, and reparations; and 4) Elucidate views on the relationship between peace and justice in Northern Uganda.
Twenty-one years of war, destruction, and the displacement of over 1.5 million people have turned northern Ugandan into a humanitarian disaster. One of the war’s principal perpetrators has been the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). A significant shift in the war occurred in late 2005 when the LRA withdrew its forces to the southern Sudan and then crossed the Nile, assembling in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the summer of 2006, peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the LRA commenced in Juba, and a first Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed on 26 August 2006. With the withdrawal of the LRA to the Congo, security in northern Uganda has improved considerably. Some displacement-camp residents have moved to new settlement sites closer to their villages. Yet others fear leaving the relative safety of the camps until a final peace agreement has been signed and the LRA fighters have been demobilized. This is a delicate stage of the conflict, and a deeper understanding of the needs and desires of affected populations will be crucial to a long-term resolution.This report presents the findings of a population-based study conducted by the Human Rights Center, University of California Berkeley, Payson Center for International Development, Tulane University, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. The research was based on a cross-sectional survey of 2,875 individuals, supplemented by in-depth qualitative interviews, in eight districts of northern Uganda most affected by the conflict from April to June 2007. The study capture attitudes about peace, justice, and social reconstruction while peace talks were taking place between the Ugandan government and the LRA in Juba, south Sudan.
The International Criminal Court‘s intervention into the ongoing civil war in northern Uganda evoked a chorus of confident predictions as to its capacity to bring peace and justice to the war-torn region. This optimism is unwarranted, however. The article analyzes the consequences for peace and justice of the ICC's intervention, dividing them into two categories: those resulting from the political instrumentalization of the ICC by the Ugandan government, and those resulting from the discourse and practice of the ICC as an institution of global law enforcement.
As to the first, the article argues that the Ugandan government referred the conflict to the ICC in order to obtain international support for its militarization and to entrench, not resolve, the war; the ICC, in accepting the referral and prosecuting only the Lord‘s Resistance Army, has in effect chosen to pursue a politically pragmatic case even though doing so contravenes the interests of peace, justice, and the rule of law. As to the second, the article reveals the harmful effects that ICC intervention can have on the capacity for autonomous political organization and action among civilian victims of violence, specifically how it leads to depoliticization by promoting a political dependency mediated by international law. The article draws from this analysis disturbing implications about ICC interventions generally, and concludes by asking whether ICC practice may be reformed so as to avoid these negative consequences.
Reproduces a paper given at a September 2006 symposium in Vienna questioning the compatibility of self referrals by state parties to the International Criminal Court with the principle of complementarity. Considers whether the practice is consistent with the intentions of the Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998 and explains the dangers of targeting rebel rather than pro-government groups. Reflects on the court's inconsistent approach to the gravity threshold for intervention and the uncertain relationship between domestic jurisdiction and complementarity.
The conflict in Northern Uganda is now in its 17th year. It pitches a rebel group, the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army, against the Ugandan government and against its own people, the Acholi. The robustness of the conflict as a semi-permanent feature of the Ugandan condition for such a long time indicates that the forces working against peace appear to be stronger than the forces working for it. To understand the conflict, the complex genesis of the Northern war must be understood. It must be adequately explained why the insurgency occurred at all, why it did not occur at an earlier time and why it persists to this day. These conditions, once clarified, must be complimented by an analysis of the character of the LRA rebellion itself, often oversimplified and described in terms of its assumed millenarian character (with reference to the biblical Ten Commandments). The following analysis will first establish a brief historical perspective to the conflict in the North. It will then analyze the emergence of the conflict in terms of root causes and situational factors, and look at the question why the LRA rebellion adopted the format it did and why the war persists for all these years. It will finally look at the question of what next.