Preparations begin for Uganda's
war-crimes trials

While three countries attacked Ugandan rebels earlier this month, legal experts gathered to lay the groundwork for a war-crimes tribunal to try the guerilla leaders.

The Ugandan government, locked in a 20-year conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army, is getting assistance from the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Public International Law and Policy Group. The nongovernmental organization, co-founded by Case Western Reserve University law professor Michael Scharf, has been working with high level Ugandan officials for the past two months on issues related to the indictment of five rebel leaders by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as well as the establishment of Uganda’s own Special War Crimes Chamber.

During Scharf’s recent visit to the capital, Kampala, on Dec. 14, the militaries of Uganda, southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo targeted members and bases of the Lord’s Resistance Army. If captured alive, top-ranking rebels, including leader Joseph Kony, will be transferred to the International Criminal Court or become the first defendants before the country’s own Special War Crimes Chamber.

“Kony and his followers have committed some of the worst international crimes imaginable,” Scharf says.

The Lord’s Resistance Army has terrorized northern Uganda, kidnapping tens of thousands of children and turning them into sex slaves and child soldiers. Peace negotiations between Uganda and the guerrillas have broken down, with Kony refusing to sign a peace deal over fears he would be transferred to the International Criminal Court. The deal, known as the Juba Peace Accords, pledged that top defendants would remain in the country for domestic prosecution.

Part of the Public International Law and Policy Group’s work in December included critiquing pending war-crimes legislation, which will go to a parliamentary vote in January or February.

“Legislation is necessary,” Scharf says, “to spell out the Special Chamber’s jurisdiction, penalties and procedures, as well as its relationship to a proposed Truth Commission and to the International Criminal Court.”

The Special War Crimes Chamber would try top-level defendants, Scharf notes, while a Truth Commission and traditional justice mechanisms would handle lower-level members of the rebel army, including child soldiers. Uganda, which originally asked the International Criminal Court to prosecute, could hold trials domestically if the international court determines Uganda is capable of fair and effective proceedings.

“The officials we’re working with believe the ICC indictment and the Juba Peace Accords present Uganda with an opportunity to progress the rule of law itself and set an example for other African nations,” Scharf says.

Scharf will re-join colleagues Mike Newton of Vanderbilt University and Patricia Taft, director of the group’s office in Kampala, in February for additional consultation.