Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding on the Ground: Victims and Ex-Combatants (Law, Conflict and International Relations) (48 page)

Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda

These are attributed to “a 14-point strategy set out by H.E. President for the recovery of the North.”
³⁹
The document is intended to be in force during 2007–10.

The
PRDP
lays out four strategic objectives, including the following:

• consolidation of state authority;
  
• rebuilding and empowering communities;
  
• revitalization of the economy; and
  
• peacebuilding and reconciliation.
  ⁴⁰
  

Each of these objectives addresses some of the many elements involved in peacebuilding and transitional justice, and there are overlaps among objectives. For the purposes of this chapter, two of the strategic objectives have the most relevance: the consolidation of state authority, and peacebuilding and reconciliation.

The first strategic objective, the consolidation of state authority, seeks to expand police, judicial, and prison services, and strengthen local administration. This includes key activities of peacebuilding and transitional justice, including the facilitation of peace agreement provisions and the enhancement of police, judicial services, prisons, auxiliary forces, and local government. This includes gradual demilitarization and greater or lesser deployment of the Uganda People’s Defence Force in various sub-regions.

The second, peacebuilding and reconciliation, seeks to address conflicts and build trust and reconciliation in the community through the improvement of local governance. Peacebuilding and transitional justice activities include public information, education, and communication and counseling programs, and programs for the demobilization and re-integration of ex-combatants. The
PRDP
promises a special focus on what it calls conflict management capacity, rebuilding social capital, and post-conflict stabilization. Reconciliation is assumed to have a natural fit with peacebuilding strategies, with no question asked as to the inclusion of what might otherwise be the programmatic purview of transitional justice policies.

Poverty Eradication Action Plan

The
Poverty Eradication Action Plan
is Uganda’s IMF-mandated Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, and was prepared:

The plan states that the remaining challenges facing Uganda include the consolidation of national security, dealing with the consequences of conflict, and improving regional equity; restoring sustainable growth in the incomes of the poor; building strong social and economic infrastructure; enhancing human development; and using public resources more efficiently.
⁴²
It is important, here, to note the IMF- and World Bank-friendly language as opposed to the language regularly used by Museveni and others in articulating the challenges faced by the country, because it reveals what these outside bodies and their technocrats expect Museveni will do—versus what has actually been done.
⁴³
For example, Museveni often claimed that nothing needs to be done in Northern Uganda because “[S]ecurity in northern Uganda ha[s] been restored.”
⁴⁴
Yet both the
PEAP
and
PRDP
, written during the same period, acknowledged that it has not.

The goals of the
PEAP
are arranged in five pillars:

• economic management;
  
• production, competitiveness, and incomes;
  
• security, conflict-resolution, and disaster-management;
  
• good governance; and
  
• human development.
  ⁴⁵
  

As with the
PRDP
, many of the objectives and goals seem to flow from one pillar to another. For the purposes of this chapter, two pillars have the most relevance: security, conflict-resolution, and disaster-management; and good governance.

The first of these, security, conflict-resolution, and disaster-management, takes an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach, with goals including addressing rebel insurgency, cattle rustling, and prostitution
⁴⁶
—suggesting that the GOU (or its master, the IMF) has no intention of addressing the underlying complexities of the problems. These aims are clearly disparate and ought to be addressed by different strategies and under different arms of government to be properly attended to.

The second, good governance, includes democracy, human rights, and what is called “political governance,” as well as justice, law and order, and public accountability and transparency. Its key areas of focus include democratization, constitutional review, electoral politics, political governance, international conventions, and national governance, and only scant attention is paid to access to justice, its quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Amnesty Act

In November 1999, the Government of Uganda passed the Amnesty Act, which was enacted in January 2000. The Act reads as follows:

1. actual participation in combat;
   
2. collaborating with the perpetrators of the war or armed rebellion;
   
3. committing any other crime in the furtherance of war or armed rebellion; or
   
4. assisting or aiding the conduct or prosecution of the war or armed rebellion.
   ⁴⁷
   

By July 2008, the Amnesty Commission had granted amnesty to 22,107 ex-combatants, called “reporters.”
⁴⁸

The amnesty “was conceived as a tool for ending conflict … a significant step towards ending the conflict in the north and working towards a process of national reconciliation.”
⁴⁹
The Government of Uganda, however, is largely seen to have, at the very best, ambiguous support for the amnesty process, and has not presented a consistent position on the Amnesty Act since its enactment. Numerous informants questioned whether or not the government was really serious about the amnesty. One elderly man in Kitgum articulated a commonly held view: “Parliament said [the Amnesty Act] was ok, but the president himself didn’t want it. This is no secret.”
⁵⁰

This conception of amnesty is substantially different from amnesties that have been implemented in other situations of transitional justice. The self-amnesty granted in Chile, for example, was granted to military personnel in the early years of the military dictatorship, and in
blanket
form, to keep them from being
prosecuted in the future. The amnesty granted in South Africa as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process was granted on an
ad hoc
basis in exchange for testimony. The amnesty in Uganda was established
before
the end of the conflict. While people in Uganda appear to perceive of the amnesty as having been very much a tool to end the war, there is less clarity over the consequences it might have afterward. Even Parliament has vacillated over the potential applicability of the Amnesty Act to the “big fish” of the LRA, including Joseph Kony.
⁵¹

Juba Agreements

The Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army have met several times in a series of failed peace talks including the Pece Stadium Accord (1988), the Addis Ababa Accord (1990), a series of peace talks (1994), and another set negotiated by Betty Bigombe (2005).
⁵²
The latest round of peace talks began in August 2006 and petered out by May 2008. These were held in Juba, South Sudan. The Juba talks were brokered by the new Government of South Sudan, which “ha[d] a clear interest in ending the threat to regional security the northern Uganda conflict poses.”
⁵³
The involvement of the Government of South Sudan began in May 2006, when the LRA contacted South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar and asked him to approach the GOU about commencing peace talks. The GOU and LRA were able to agree on the inclusion of five agenda items for the talks: cessation of hostilities; finding long-term solutions to conflict; accountability and reconciliation; ceasefire; and demobilization, disarmament, reintegration, and resettlement.
⁵⁴

The “Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation” and the subsequent “Annexure to the Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation”
⁵⁵
are reasonably broad in their commitments to justice. None of the several references to traditional justice in any way define (nor, contrarily, do they limit) the form that such mechanisms might take, how they would be implemented, or who would have ultimate jurisdiction over them. At the same time, however, they are specific with regard to the kinds of institutions that are to be established to bring about this kind of justice.

The “Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation” and the “Annexure” address what might be considered traditional transitional justice concerns. The “Annexure” commits the Government to “expeditiously prepare and develop the necessary legislation and modalities for implementing” all that the two “Accountability Agreements” contain.
⁵⁶
Indeed, the Government is now obligated to undertake a range of activities related to justice. These include the enactment of legislation required to provide for the institutions to be created,
⁵⁷
the adaptation of the existing legal framework to incorporate the terms of the agreements,
⁵⁸
the creation of an investigations unit,
⁵⁹
the provision of fair, speedy, and public hearings,
⁶⁰
and the amendment of the Uganda Human Rights Commission or the Amnesty Act.
⁶¹
In addition, the Government has guaranteed that it will make arrangements for victim reparations
⁶²
and to determine
⁶³
and promote
⁶⁴
the appropriate roles of traditional mechanisms.

The other four agreements include the kinds of activities normally sought through peacebuilding processes. These include cessation of hostilities and a permanent ceasefire. They also include, under the heading “comprehensive solutions,” some preliminary power-sharing arrangements, as well as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR), economic development needs, the recognition of vulnerable groups, and important references to property rights and compensation including land and cattle. The fifth agreement explicitly includes DDR specifications with particular reference to children, youth, women, and those with special needs. In the absence of any kind of actual, sustained peacebuilding process, these agreements are considered to be “peacebuilding.”

International Criminal Court Act, 2010

Subsequent to the referral by the government of the situation in Northern Uganda
⁶⁵
to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in 2003, Uganda began the process of amending its national legislation to allow its own national courts to proceed with prosecutions for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes and to allow Uganda to fully cooperate with the ICC. The War Crimes Division of the High Court will be eligible to try any crimes committed from 1987, which the GOU considers the beginning of the conflict with the LRA. After nearly six years of study and debate, the bill was passed into law on 10 March 2010, to the wide protest of many from Northern Uganda who perceived the ICC as malicious and biased against those from Northern Uganda.

Not content to rely on the ICC alone, the GOU has also established a War Crimes Division of the High Court that will be suitable for these kinds of cases. Justices of international stature and with experience in international criminal courts have been appointed,
⁶⁶
and a roster of staff, including a registry office with a Registrar, an office of the prosecutor, and office of the defense counsel, awaits a case to try.
⁶⁷
The Government of Uganda, through its Justice, Law and Order Sector Transitional Justice Working Group, was trying to determine the modalities of the inclusion of customary law within the War Crimes Division of the High Court and elsewhere, as well as financial and workload considerations.
⁶⁸

The policies laid out above are important because, collectively, they prescribe the GOU’s course of action on peacebuilding and transitional justice. As noted at the outset of this chapter, far from presenting any kind of dilemma, peacebuilding and transitional justice in Uganda have been addressed together, although the solutions are often contradictory or work to weaken both. In fact, both form a central part of Uganda’s plan for national development.

Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice Activities

While the policies presented above tell a story of goodwill and institutional practices intent on remedying the situation in Uganda—and in Northern Uganda, in particular—the Government’s actions are far less promising. In programming on
accountability, security-sector reform, DDR, development of the rule of law, land claims, displacement, and cattle-rustling, the Government’s record tells a different story. As we shall see, there is a considerable gap between programming and policy for each of these activities.

Accountability

While the GOU has laid what appears to be a strong foundation for accountability in the country, it is the case that its record of holding to account those who are alleged to have committed criminal acts is, in fact, abysmal. Little or nothing has been done in this regard.