Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding on the Ground: Victims and Ex-Combatants (Law, Conflict and International Relations) (47 page)

97
 Interview with Edward (Eddy) Mulbah, Sr. Technical Advisor, Liberia Peacebuilding Office, 22 February 2011, Monrovia.

98
 Patrick Vink
et al
.,
Talking Peace
, op. cit., p. 67.

99
 The TRC’s
Final Report
enumerates a number of possible memorialization measures in Section 17. I have highlighted those that are least contentious and most affordable.

100
 Interview with Lindora Howard Diawara, Coordinator, Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), 20 February 2011, Monrovia.

11
The Supposed Accountability/ Peacebuilding Dilemma in Uganda

Joanna R. Quinn

Introduction

The literature on transitional justice and peacebuilding has tended to assert two competing claims: either that attempting to promote accountability would undermine peacebuilding efforts, or that accountability is essential to peacebuilding. In Uganda, transitional justice and peacebuilding have been intricately linked and carried out contemporaneously—largely, to the detriment of both. While the Government of Uganda (GOU) does not appear to distinguish between peacebuilding and transitional justice, these goals are not differentiated either from those of development and poverty eradication. In fact, peacebuilding and transitional justice are incorporated in national development policies. This chapter examines key development policies and programs established by the GOU, in order to identify and assess specific activities carried out in support of transitional justice and peacebuilding.

The peacebuilding and transitional justice policies of the GOU are considerably affected by a number of factors that render them less effective. A first element is the necessity of and presence of international donors and NGOs, which do a lot of the “heavy lifting” in the country. The GOU has abdicated much of the responsibility for programming in these areas, and other agencies have stepped in to provide such services. For example, the international donor community provided 36 percent of the budget of the Uganda Human Rights Commission in 2008, which was used to fund “core activities” of the Commission.
¹
Although not uncommon in war-affected countries, the government’s own
Peace Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda
(
PRDP
) acknowledges that “Northern Uganda has a large number of national and international actors providing humanitarian, recovery and development support to war-affected communities.”
²
The document further specifies that humanitarian agencies have been responsible for “life-saving support and relief.”
³

The second exacerbating element is the uncoordinated approach pursued by the GOU with regards to policy implementation. The Government admits that:

While this is common in nearly every sector, it seems particularly striking in policies surrounding transitional justice and peacebuilding. Various agencies at both the national and local levels have taken up portions of the work, including the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness, the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF), and the National Security Council.
⁵

The third condition exacerbating efforts at peacebuilding and transitional justice is that the GOU is trying to serve many masters. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, holds the GOU captive to its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility—pushing for particular goals and objectives to be sought and reached, and neglecting other important areas of concern.
⁶
Uganda’s complex relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC), too, has caused it to pursue accountability in clearly contradictory ways, including the GOU’s referral of the situation in Northern Uganda to the ICC in December 2003, which contravened the Amnesty Act proclaimed in 2000.
⁷

Fourth, for several reasons, the GOU’s strategies have been largely ineffective. This is in part because development needs are astounding; indeed, the problems in Northern Uganda have been disaggregated from development policies in the rest of the country.
⁸
The conflict in Northern Uganda has not yet technically stopped and agreements on cessation of hostilities have not been signed, although, at the time of writing, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has moved on to wage war and commit abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. And the GOU continues to exaggerate some problems, while underestimating others to its political advantage; for example, the
Poverty Eradication Action Plan
(
PEAP
) says that “5 percent of the population has been displaced,”
⁹
while that number in Northern Uganda alone represents 80 percent of the population.
¹⁰
The GOU’s ineffectiveness in this area is a purposeful miscalculation, designed so that by downplaying the severity of the issues, it can expend far less effort. This has been to the detriment of the people of Northern Uganda, where a “negative peace” has emerged.

Fifth, and perhaps most obvious, is the serious nature of underdevelopment in Uganda, as it intersects with long-standing conflicts throughout the country. Technically, Uganda is not yet a country in transition; as Robinson has suggested, it is a country in the “pre-transition” phase.
¹¹
The socio-economic conditions surrounding transitional justice efforts have posed myriad difficulties.

These five factors intensify the problems with peacebuilding and transitional justice strategies in Uganda. They are, however, also important when considering how the GOU has responded to the goals and objectives of both the
PRDP
and the
PEAP
.

Background and History of Conflict in Uganda

Extolled as the “pearl of Africa” by explorer Henry Stanley, Uganda is a country whose beauty belies a modern history filled with conflict and violence. Its relatively peaceful colonization by the British in 1894 was soon followed by bloodshed and war among the 56 different ethnic groups that co-exist within the country’s boundaries. The ongoing conflict in Northern Uganda is yet another in a series of conflicts drawn loosely along ethnic and geographic lines.

The country achieved independence from the British in 1962, under Prime Minister Milton Obote. Obote’s first term in power was characterized by significant numbers of riots and armed attacks.
¹²
In 1971, his army commander, General Idi Amin Dada, overthrew Obote and seized power. He then began a reign of terror, systematically murdering and torturing those he considered to stand in his way.
¹³
He targeted those who were seen to have supported Obote, especially people of Acholi and Langi descent, many of whom had tended to dominate the military. In 1972, Amin expelled more than 70,000 Asians living in Uganda, confiscating their property and businesses. During this time, soldiers and police conducted brutal campaigns of torture.
¹⁴
The number of people who were killed during this period is estimated at between 300,000
¹⁵
and 500,000,
¹⁶
earning Amin the nickname, “the butcher.”

After a bitter conflict involving Tanzanian government forces, Amin’s forces were defeated in 1979. Interim governments were declared in 1979 and 1980. As the result of rigged elections in 1980, Obote returned to power. The country was once again the target of extreme violence and abuse, this time far worse than anything experienced during Obote’s first term in office. The paramilitary apparatus of the state again began its practice of routinely violating human rights, by means of rape, torture, looting, and destruction of property.
¹⁷
The scale of repression and abuse was roughly the same as it had been under Amin, only this time with a heightened and reinvigorated fury. Conservative estimates again place the number of those killed during this period at approximately 300,000
¹⁸
to 500,000.
¹⁹
Obote remained in office until July 1985 when he was overthrown, again by a faction of the Ugandan military. From July 1985, a military council governed for six months, until it, too, was overthrown.

At the head of the victorious National Resistance Movement (NRM, formerly the National Resistance Army—NRA) was Yoweri Museveni. When he seized power in 1986, he abolished all political parties except his own. He and his troops had been fighting against the regimes of Amin and Obote, as well as the transitional regimes, in Uganda since 1971. In 2006, Museveni remained in power after several controversial changes of the country’s constitution and contentious elections.
²⁰

As with his predecessors, Museveni has continued to face considerable opposition from many of the 56 different ethnic groups throughout the country. Between 1986 and 2006, Museveni faced more than 20 armed insurgencies.
²¹
One of the longest lasting, and most devastating, conflicts is the one in Northern
Uganda. “The conflict in Acholiland began soon after Uganda’s last regime change in January 1986. It was triggered [in part] by the NRM’s methods for consolidating control over the northern parts of the country.”
²²
Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, abducted children to conscript into his rebel forces, the boys to act as soldiers, and the girls to be used by him and his fellow rebels as their “wives,”
²³
as well as carriers of supplies and even soldiers. He and his troops perpetrated brutal abuses against the people of Northern Uganda. Abducted child soldiers themselves are often forced to commit the most heinous of acts, and often against their own families.
²⁴
In one community, for example, 79 percent of people reported having witnessed torture, 40 percent had witnessed killing, and 5 percent had been forced to physically harm another.
²⁵

Northern Uganda has been decimated by this conflict, which “has over the years spread across the entire northern region and parts of the east.”
²⁶
Those who are now 20 years old or younger have never known anything but the conditions of war and insecurity. Between 30,000 and 45,000 children have been abducted by the LRA.
²⁷
In the early 2000s, children began the phenomenon of “night commuting,” wherein an estimated 25,000 children living in these areas walked for miles each night to sleep in the relative safety of centers guarded by the Ugandan military, to avoid being abducted.
²⁸

At the height of the conflict, in 2004, it was estimated that 80 percent of the region’s population were internally displaced persons within the region and living in camps for the internally displaced.
²⁹
These camps are an “integral part of the Ugandan government’s anti-insurgency policy. In some places, anyone who refused to move from their rural homes was forcibly displaced.”
³⁰
Effectively, the people were “herded into camps where they [were forced to] survive on relief aid.”
³¹
Reports estimated that 1,000 people died each week as a result of the deplorable conditions within the camps.
³²
A clear disconnect continues to exist between Northern Uganda and the rest of the country. As one human rights activist said, “We … have two countries in one—the north and the south. This is true politically and economically.”
³³
Although many have begun to return home, it has become increasingly apparent that the people of Northern Uganda now living in camps may never be able to return to their homes because many have lost their land, and many others may simply prefer to stay.
³⁴
This could further hamper the process of ending the war and is likely to have a direct impact on the economic sustainability of the region.
³⁵

Although Kony and the LRA have moved on to other countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, in reality the war in Northern Uganda is far from over. It is not known precisely how many rebel soldiers remain in the bush with the LRA; estimates range from 200 to 20,000.
³⁶
But a succession of peace talks held over the years have broken down, including the Juba talks initiated in 2006 between the LRA and the Government of Uganda. Although five separate agreements were signed during those talks, no comprehensive peace agreement was ever finalized.

Strategies and Programs of the GOU

The Government of Uganda has implemented a number of policies and procedures to deal with peacebuilding and transitional justice—although neither one is as traditionally understood in the scholarly literature. Peacebuilding and transitional justice are sometimes presented as part of larger policies that deal with overall development and poverty eradication—although the GOU does acknowledge the inappropriateness of a development framework for dealing with conflict-related problems.
³⁷
Nonetheless, many of the detailed policies surrounding peacebuilding and transitional justice are contained in the
Poverty Eradication Action Plan
and the
Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda
. Beyond that, peacebuilding and transitional justice policies are presented in a sometimes random array of documents that have been implemented on an
ad hoc
and often-contradictory basis over a period of years. These policies are discussed below.