The International Criminal Court and African Conflicts: The Case of Uganda

Abstract

For more than two decades, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been committing some of the most appalling human rights violations and war crimes against civilian populations in northern Uganda. The Ugandan Government has been unable to defeat the rebel movement and effectively protect the civilian populations from its carnage. This situation led the government to pass the Amnesty Act of 2000 in a bid to entice the group's leaders to end the fighting. Subsequently, the International Criminal Court (ICC), at the request of the Ugandan Government, issued arrest warrants in 2005 for the five main leaders of the movement, a move regarded by some as the main stumbling block to peace in Uganda, as the rebels are insisting on the annulment of these warrants before they can sign a definitive peace agreement. This article examines the dilemma that this situation seems to have created in the peace process in Uganda. It concludes that the ICC should be firm in combating impunity, but flexible in accepting other alternatives to attributive justice whenever necessitated by the situation, as its own statute acknowledges.

Muno-Lawake : contrasting established literature to the critical and local understandings of war in Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda conflict-affected Acholiland, northern Uganda

“…In this regard, it is crucial to note that these points of divergence should not be considered as superficial differences, with the salience of each theme being emphasized in different manners, whether in the established or critical literature. lj0 Moreover, while all the themes listed above are very important to the discussion of conflict in northern Uganda, due to space, the scope of this thesis focuses on only two thematic aspects of the Johnson, 2006, Dunn, 2004and Feldman, 2007138 Allen, 2006, Vinci, 2005, Jackson, 2002and Souare, 2009139 Vinci 2005, Johnson 2006, Feldman, 2007and Dunn, 2004140 Doom and Vlassenroot, 1999 would "replace the government with one based on the Ten Commandments " 141 Additionally, Dunn furthers the fundamentalist perspective of the LRA/M by adding:…”