Asks if justice is served by the International Criminal Court's work in Uganda
Branch, Adam
WHEN THE International Criminal Court announced in January 2004 that its landmark first investigation would be into the brutal war in Northern Uganda, the statement was met with widespread and...
...Why Museveni—himself a signatory to a bilateral immunity agreement with the United States and a consistent critic of human rights activists—is suddenly inviting international prosecution is obvious...
...Even when one feels injured by horrible crimes committed far away, so long as one does not have to live with the consequences of punishment, one's intervention must be limited to solidarity...
...The United States delivered the first blow by asserting that its nationals would not be subject to prosecution by the Court...
...Humanity" is too thin a community upon which to base a universal right to punish...
...The Court's legitimacy was further undermined when the United States rejected it as a venue for the trial of those accused of planning the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath, whether suspected terrorists or Afghani or Iraqi officials charged with war crimes...
...If local injustice is the price to be paid for the kind of international justice that results from ICC prosecution, then we must abandon the Court and imagine new modes of building a truly global rule of law...
...The unambiguously evil acts of Kony and his followers made the LRA high command seem an appropriate first target for the ICC...
...WHAT HAS ATTRACTED the most international attention is the LRA policy of forced recruitment...
...At present, over 90 percent of rebel ranks are abducted children, some as young as eight, forced to commit atrocities against each other or their families to bind them permanently to the LRA...
...President Museveni has indicated to the Prosecutor his intention to amend this amnesty so as to exclude the leadership of the LRA, ensuring that those bearing the greatest responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed in Northern Uganda are brought to justice...
...The prosecutor may very well see the guarantee of impunity to the Ugandan government as the necessary price to pay for its cooperation and to ensure a successful first case for the ICC...
...For the people of the North, the guarantee of amnesty to Kony and other top leaders was an insignificant price to pay for getting their children back...
...This internationally supported punishment may, in some cases, be part of a locally based process...
...Moreover, Museveni would not have initiated a prosecution he did not think he could control...
...When Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni approached the special prosecutor, Luis MorenoOcampo, to ask him to investigate the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has terrorized Northern Uganda since the late 1980s, Moreno-Ocampo accepted...
...Ugandan human rights and peace activists see such a one-sided judicial process as a catastrophe...
...People want this war to stop...
...Support for the blanket amnesty is overwhelming among the displaced people themselves, as I discovered while doing fieldwork in the war zone...
...But the cold war ushered in a long period of paralysis for the institutional development of international law, and it was not until the 1990s that the idea was again taken seriously...
...However, the Court that has emerged today is far removed from the juristic dream of a court with universal jurisdiction and enforcement powers, the primary organ of a global rule of law...
...But all the signs indicate that this will not happen...
...The rebels misinterpreted this declining support as sympathy for the government POLITICS ABROAD and, faced with diminishing resources and recruits, they turned on the very population that had given birth to them...
...The government's own Amnesty Commission spokesman, Moses Saku, put it bluntly: any amendment of the Amnesty Law "is going to make it very difficult for the LRA to stop doing what they are doing...
...The prosecutor has the discretion to decide to include crimes by the UPDF, but it does not appear that she will be pressured to do so by the international community— and certainly not by Museveni...
...THE BELIEF that the "justice" provided by international law is absolute, taking precedence over local resolutions to longstanding, complex political crises, is the quintessence of international law fundamentalism...
...The ongoing international effort to prosecute Hissene Habre, the ex-president of Chad, was initiated and is being driven forward by a broad coalition of Chadian human rights nongovernmental organizations and victims' groups...
...What began in 1986 as a guerrilla struggle for political inclusion became over the years a predatory, terrorist subjugation of the people in whose name the struggle had begun...
...In the wake of the Nuremburg Trials after the Second World War, jurists began working on plans for a permanent court that would prosecute individuals—as opposed to states, the traditional subjects of international law— for crimes against humanity, crimes against the peace, and genocide...
...Kony himself is subject to universal moral condemnation...
...The quest for international "justice" by well-intentioned outsiders—by a human rights community that is based in the distant metropolises of New York, London, the Hague, and Geneva—will have only one effect in this case: the prolongation of suffering for more than a million people in Uganda...
...support for the Ugandan military has increased to include, since September 11, 2001, funds earmarked to eliminate LRA "terrorists...
...The war has led to thousands of civilian deaths, the economic devastation of the North, and the forced movement of more than a million people—the entire rural population— into displaced people's camps, which lack adequate food, water, and medicine...
...The decision, on the one hand, to seek justice through punishment or, on the other, to forgo punishment in favor of justice through reconciliation, is a decision that must be made by the concrete community that is the victim of the crimes and that will have to live with the consequences of the decision...
...Indeed, the governmentled counterinsurgency has been vicious: the displaced people's camps themselves were created through a government campaign of displacement, including bombing and burning down entire villages...
...The ICC thus began casting about for a case that could prove its relevance and utility...
...The maimings, massacres, and mass abductions carried out by the LRA fit neatly into the categories of "grave violations of human rights," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity" that form the vocabulary of international legal condemnation...
...Can it bring justice and, more important, peace to this troubled region...
...For a number of reasons—lack of political will, corruption within the army, resilience and tenacity of the LRA child soldiers— the UPDF has not been able to defeat the LRA for eighteen years...
...International judicial processes are based on the idea that justice is best realized by punishing the guilty...
...Although LRA abuses have received the most international attention, recently in response to calls from the courageous groups working on the ground in Northern Uganda, international human rights organizations have started to focus on war crimes perpetrated by the Ugandan army, the Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF...
...International law must be guided by those it is claiming to serve, and by their vision of what is just or prudent...
...But when international prosecution is not in solidarity with local demands, then the idea that any part of humanity is entitled to punish those guilty of "crimes against humanity" necessarily entails a rejection of others' autonomy and self-determination...
...In the first few years these rebel groups enjoyed considerable popular support from the local Acholi population, but as fatigue and disillusionment with the war spread through the countryside, support dwindled...
...That time, in response to the UPDF incursion into Sudan, the LRA simply reentered Uganda and stepped up its anti-civilian violence after what had been a period of relative peace...
...Similarly, the institutional interest of organizations such as Amnesty and HRW in an ICC trial has led them to welcome what will inevitably be the prosecution of only one side in this war—the top LRA commanders...
...In this putative upholding of the ideals of justice, the ICC conveniently ignores the fact that the Amnesty Law of 2000 was the product of a dramatic effort by activists to salvage their last, best chance for peace...
...As Zachary Lomo, director of the Ugandan Refugee Law Project, explained, "The only way of stopping Kony is stopping violence against Kony, and giving total support to the Amnesty...
...In fact, essential U.S...
...No one questions that Kony is responsible for these crimes—but many question whether or not ICC prosecution is the appropriate response...
...From the early 1990s, the LRA has been synonymous with a reign of terror against children...
...WHEN THE International Criminal Court announced in January 2004 that its landmark first investigation would be into the brutal war in Northern Uganda, the statement was met with widespread and passionate condemnation from within the East African country...
...Within a couple of years, they realized that children were more easily molded than adults into obedient, effective killing machines...
...Instead, violence by the UPDF is unfailingly answered with increased violence by the LRA against the unprotected civilian population...
...As this "temporary" measure persists year after year, an entire generation of malnourished children is being raised, knowing only the horrors of life in the camps...
...Proposals for an international criminal court have circulated for more than half a century...
...Indeed, the rhetorical use of the ICC investigation to justify intensified military operations has already begun: simultaneous with the announcement of the appointment of American lawyer Christine Chung as the investigation's prosecutor, the Ugandan army announced that it would reenter Sudan to hunt down the LRA leadership, in a replay of its 2002 Operation Iron Fist...
...Rebel movements have operated in Northern Uganda since Museveni took power...
...IN SPITE OF THIS reality, the ICC statement goes on to say that, once the Amnesty Law is amended, "A key issue will be locating and arresting the LRA leadership...
...The ICC statement of January 29 explains, "In a bid to encourage members of the LRA to return to normal life, the Ugandan authorities have enacted an amnesty law...
...It is generally believed that the conflict will continue as long as the rebel high command wishes it to continue...
...If it is not, the ICC will find its already tenuous legitimacy eviscerated even further by its own misfeasance and ineptitude in carrying out its statutory responsibilities...
...The same sort of institutional arrogance underlies the idea that an American prosecutor can be the exclusive agent for bringing "justice" to people she has never met...
...This apparent paradox is explicable only by situating it in the ICC's current predicament, in the history of the Ugandan war, and in the broader dilemma of merging international and local justice, or reconciling the demands of justice and the demands of peace...
...The major players in the Western human rights community quickly responded, but called for the investigation to comprehend atrocities by the LRA and by the Ugandan government...
...ADAM BRANCH spent a year in the conflict zone in Northern Uganda, where he was involved in peace efforts...
...Similarly, HRW called the "chance for [an] impartial ICC investigation into serious crimes a welcome step," asserting also that "the ICC prosecutor cannot ignore the crimes that Ugandan government troops allegedly have committed...
...The government does not protect the camps, so those in the camps are easy targets for the predation of the LRA—and often of underpaid, undisciplined UPDF soldiers...
...In response to a powerful international lobbying effort, the Rome Statute constituting the International Criminal Court was signed by 120 countries on July 17, 1998, with only seven votes in opposition, including 22 n DISSENT / Summer 2004 the United States and, reportedly, China, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, and Sudan...
...This will require the active cooperation of states and international institutions in supporting the efforts of the Ugandan authorities...
...International arrest warrants would be used as a carte blanche to impose the "military solution"— but the "military solution" is simply not a solution...
...Amnesty and HRW represented the ICC prosecution as an opportunity to bring to light DISSENT / Summer 2004 n 23 POLITICS ABROAD and punish both the LRA and the UPDF for war crimes...
...Instead, the protests came from the Ugandan human rights community itself, from activists, lawyers, and civil-society organizations working for peace in the North...
...So Museveni's proposed amendment to the Amnesty Law will only lead to a 24 n DISSENT / Summer 2004 prolongation, and probable intensification, of the conflict as the LRA command concludes that its only nonviolent exit strategy has been closed off...
...It is feared that this new UPDF offensive will also lead to another pointless incursion into Sudan and, in response, a resurgence of atrocities against the civilian population of Acholi by the LRA...
...This policy fed popular discontent, and soon the rebels' only mode of conscription was abduction...
...The LRA has no apologists and no spokespersons defending its atrocities...
...dissertation at Columbia University...
...At the insistence of Northerners—that is, the victims of the LRAthe amnesty was extended to all levels of the rebel command, even Kony himself...
...When legal prosecution in the name of humanity is in opposition to a community's demand for justice through peace and reconciliation, the prosecution takes on a peculiar and unattractive character: international actors come to the "rescue" of "helpless victims," often aligning themselves with undemocratic loDISSENT / Summer 2004 n 25 POLITICS ABROAD cal political forces that manipulate these foreign philanthropists for their own selfish purposes...
...The Statute received its sixtieth state ratification in April of 2002, and thereby entered into force...
...Museveni's request is an attempt to claim international legitimacy for a military counterinsurgency that is strongly opposed by civilians and human rights activists living in the war-ravaged regions...
...The vice president of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI), retired Bishop McLeod Ochola, told a UN reporter, "This kind of approach is going to destroy all efforts for peace...
...Father Carlos Rodriguez, also of ARLPI, made his opposition to the ICC unambiguous in a public statement: "The issuing of . . . international arrest warrants would practically close once and for all the path to peaceful negotiation as a means to end this long war, crushing whatever little progress has been made during these years . . . . Obviously, nobody can convince the leaders of a rebel movement to come to the negotiating table and at the same time tell them that they will appear in courts to be prosecuted...
...AI argued that "any court investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Northern Uganda must be part of a comprehensive plan to end impunity for all such crimes, regardless of which side committed them and of the level of the perpetrator...
...the government can cease cooperating with the ICC at any time if it appears that its own military may become a subject of the inquiry...
...At first glance, the LRA appears to be a perfect target for the ICC...
...When voluntary enlistment fell in the late 1980s, the LRA started abducting civilians in large numbers to replenish their ranks...
...On January 29, the Office of the Prosecutor publicly announced that it had begun a probe into atrocities committed by the LRA...
...Those in the camps cannot leave because the UPDF kills any civilian found outside them...
...When the enforcement of international law is opposed by the "helpless victims" because the proposed intervention only makes things worse for them, insistence upon prosecution amounts, at best, to paternalism and, at worst, to a new imperialism...
...if this domestic coalition can continue to build broad popular support, the Habre case may provide a good example of international legal solidarity with the local pursuit of justice...
...The powerful minorPOLITICS ABROAD ity within the government that opposes dialogue with the rebels would find their case for a "military solution" greatly strengthened by support from the "international community...
...Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both of whom have published reports compiling the atrocities committed in the course of the war in Uganda, issued almost identical statements soon after the ICC announcement...
...UPDF abuses in the North have been public knowledge for years, with no adverse effect for the Ugandan government...
...The execution of arrest warrants would require a dramatic intensification of the government's counterinsurgency in order to capture the LRA leaders...
...The issuance and execution of arrest warrants, when translated into the local political context, will be a disaster...
...Most important, even if the "military solution" were "successful," its main effect would be the extermination of thousands of traumatized children abducted into the LRA, all in the name of capturing a few of their commanders in order to satisfy the demands of the International Criminal Court...
...The failure to provide food, medicine, decent housing, and protection, in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions, has led many Acholi to see the camps not as "protected villages" (the government's euphemism), but as a calculated effort to destroy the Acholi as an ethnic group—as genocide...
...in these cases, international prosecution can work in solidarity with local democratic demands...
...It subsequently pressed many allied and dependent states to sign bilateral immunity agreements, creating an expanding geography of legal impunity...
...Since the early 1990s the LRA, under the messianic leadership of Joseph Kony, has carried out a series of massacres, lootings, mutilations, and abductions against the Acholi...
...For perhaps the first time in the history of international law, however, those opposing the enforcement of humanitarian and human rights law were not self-interested government officials or rebel leaders...
...If we follow the ICC in branding the LRA criminals, it won't stop...
...He is finishing his Ph.D...
Vol. 51 • July 2004 • No. 3
