ICC Judges Want Ongwen Charges Confirmed in Uganda
Judges seating at the Pre-Trial chamber II of the International Criminal Court handling charges against Dominic Ongwen have appealed to parties involved in Ongwen proposed trial in Uganda to expedite the process.
The crimes were committed in Uganda, confirmation of charges and hearing of his charges including counts on crime against humanity and war crimes slated scheduled for January 21 2016 lasting 5 days will determine if there is sufficient evidence to prosecute Ongwen.
Dominic Ongwen ready to face the ICC
Addressing the press today at Northern Uganda Media Club, ICC Field Outreach Assistant, Jimmy Otim, said, the Pre-Trial judges on September 10-2015 recommended to ICC president to work out modalities with Uganda Government to enable the confirmation of charges take place in Uganda.
“ The Chamber considers that it would be desirable and in the interest of justice to hold the confirmation of charges hearing in Uganda and preferably in Gulu” Jimmy said
Adding that it was at the peak of the alleged crime and where this is not possible then the ICC would consider the trials in Kampala.
Mass Grave Site in Lukodi @JRP
Dominic shocked the world when he on the 16th of January this year, denounced further rebellion against Museveni’s government when he abandon his gorilla troops under the Lord Resistance Army.
Women wonder over their missing children
Before he surrendered Ongwen was acting as Brigade Commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army where is alleged to have committed countless murder cases, enslavement of the populace, caused grave bodily harm an act that provoked ICC to count him in the wanted list of war lords on 8 July 2005.
Victims of the dangerous LRA war
He is accused to have masterminded the bloody attack at Lukodi Internally Displaced People’s Camp where innocent lives were shuttered in cold blood.
In trying to document the 29 years of LRA war in the region, a monument with the name of over forty slain victims sits near Lukodi Primary school in Bungatira Sub-county ten miles north of Gulu municipality.
‘Memory as a tool for redress, healing and reconciliation’. Voices, August 2015 issue.
2015 marks ten years since the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) began working towards victim-centred transitional justice in northern Uganda. As we celebrate this landmark, I am excited to invite you to contribute to a special issue of JRP’s magazine Voices.
Articles featured in this forthcoming issue will:
Examine the relevance of transitional justice in 2015
Highlight the accomplishment of groups and communities in the past decade, and
Discuss best practices in justice and reconciliation in the context of JRP’s work with conflict-affected communities across northern Uganda over the past ten years.
A wide range of stakeholders in JRP’s work –from community group members to academics to civil society and government practitioners – are asked to share their views on past efforts in and the future of achieving justice and reconciliation in northern Uganda.
If you would like to contribute to this issue or request further information, please contact Oryem Nyeko at onyeko@justiceandreconciliation.com. Please note the deadline of 25 September 2015 for the submission of story ideas.
UPDATE, 28 September 2015: Please note the deadline of 2 October 2015 as a the deadline for article drafts.
Since 2012, Voices has featured over 130 articles on victim-centred views on a range of timely transitional justice issues including amnesty, reparations, truth-telling, SGBV and accountability. Limited copies of the magazine are available for free in print and online. To view past issues visit http://voices.justiceandreconciliation.com.
Submission guidelines for Voices magazine
28 September 2015
Voices is a publication of the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) which provide platforms for victim-centred views on transitional justice. Past issues have dealt with thematic areas such as amnesty, reparations, truth-telling, accountability and sexual- and gender-based violence. Wewelcome the submission of articles from conflict-affected community members, academics, civil society and government representatives on each issues’ given theme.
Writers should keep the following in mind the following as they prepare to contribute to the magazine.
JRP’s working definition of ‘transitional justice’
According to JRP’s working definition, transitional justice (TJ) is a response to widespread human rights abuses for situations of conflict transitioning to situations of peace. It aims to prevent such atrocities from happening again includes processes such as criminal prosecution, reparations, truth-telling and traditional justice.
Article requirements for Voices
Articles may be in the form of opinion, feature, interviews or news pieces, depending on the subject matter and the interests of the writer in identifying the most effective way of presenting their writing.
Articles are between 800-1200 words.
Voices uses UK spelling
Citations are important, but as Voices is not an academic publication please do not use footnotes to cite references.
Voices’ sections
Community Voices presents stories from the perspective of conflict-affected communities and individuals. These may be written by or about community or individual experiences, views, aspirations or challenges. Articles in this category are often classified as ‘Feature’ articles, but may utilise any style of writing.
Opinion articles express the writers’ opinions and critiques on a given issue. Writers are encouraged to be solution oriented and to provide recommendations where possible.
The Research Corner highlights on-going transitional justice research and provides a forum for sharing knowledge, feedback, lessons and upcoming research projects. Articles in this section may be in the form of summarised field notes and reflections, book reviews or proposed ideas for further or ongoing research.
News articles present information about recent developments in transitional justice. Writers should take into consideration the timeliness of the publication of the issue to which the writer intends to submit to.
Submission process
The editorial team at Voices uses a three-stage process for accepting, reviewing and editing submissions:
Submission of story ideas to the editorial team based on the given theme an issue is based on. This may be in the form of a brief (150-200 word) title and abstract, or simply in the form of a proposed title.
Submission of a first draft after a story idea is approved by the editorial team.
Liaising with editors and submission of final draft.
Writers are encouraged to submit high quality photographs and a brief biography (60 words) along with their articles. Please ensure that photographs are separately attached in emails (i.e. not placed in a document, but rather attached as a separate file). Biographies may contain links to email addresses or websites of the writers.
Submissions must be made by email to the editorial team at voices@justiceandreconciliation.com.
Copyright and representations
By submitting content to Voices you represent and warrant that you hold exclusive rights to reproduce,
distribute, adapt, transmit, and publicly display that content and the authority to grant publication rights to JRP and Voices.
Other considerations
In submitting to Voices, please note the following:
Voices is unable to compensate writers for their submissions.
Prior to submission, articles cannot have been published elsewhere.
Voices is not obligated to publish a submission
Voices reserves the right to edit articles in order for them to comply with these guidelines
Articles published by Voices cannot be published by the author anywhere else within three months without the express consent of JRP/Voices.
The monument to memorialise the experiences of the community of Burcoro during atrocities committed in April 1991.
It’s almost ready! The construction of the monument for the Burcoro massacre of 1991 is underway and will be completed by the end of this month.
The memorial is the first of its kind for the community and is being built in the shape of the tree that where a man was chained and shot by an NRA firing squad after being falsely accused of being a rebel, according to witnesses.
In 2013, JRP documented the experiences of the community of Burcoro during the massacre in ‘The Beasts at Burcoro’. Read this field note here.
Dominic Ongwen while charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being read during the Initial Appearance hearing on 26 January 2015 (Picture: Philipp Schulz)
In the past few months JRP has been conducting extensive consultations with women connected to Dominic Ongwen’s case at the International Criminal Court. Respondents included former combatants, massacre survivors and women who had a close affinity to him during captivity. The findings of this research will inform a new situational brief, which will be a follow-up to May 2015’s ‘Community Perceptions on Dominic Ongwen‘, and will be published late September.
Every August 30, the world commemorates the International Day of Missing Persons. In northern Uganda, thousands of people are still missing as a result of the conflict that ravaged the region between 1986 and 2006. These people went missing in various circumstances. Some were displaced as they fled their villages to seek refuge from marauding LRA rebels; others were abducted by the rebels, while others simply went missing during combat.
The relatives of these missing people continue to live with suspense of not knowing whether their relatives are dead or alive. As long as their relatives have not been declared dead, they hang on to the slim hope that one day they will show up. In addition to relatives of the missing, thousands of victims in northern Uganda continue to live with painful memories of horrendous experiences they suffered during the conflict. Many of them were victims of torture. Many lost their relatives.
Many peace-building practitioners argue that memory is central to the recovery of victims of conflict. To heal and live a meaningful life, victims need to come to terms with their past experiences.
Peace-building practitioners, therefore, design programmes for psychosocial support and healing. They build museums and monuments in memory of people who died or went missing. They advocate for reparations and accountability of perpetrators. They opine themselves as champions for promoting recovery and healing for the victims
The grim reality, however, is that many of these peace-building practitioners never understand what it truly takes for victims to live with painful memories. Having not gone through the horrendous experience of victims, the practitioners rely on their interface with victims to design their programmes. They simplify and ‘projectise’ memory. They design and implement quick projects that often have no sustainability measures. At the end of these projects, they say goodbye to the victims, write a report to donors in which they glorify their achievements in promoting memory.
As a researcher who has lived and worked in northern Uganda for many years, I have learnt a thing or two about memory. There are many glaring realities about memory that peace-builders do not take into consideration.
Finally, acknowledgment of victims’ experiences through symbolic gestures is also a sure avenue for promoting memory. This acknowledgement can take the form of museums, monuments, memorial projects, or official apologies from perpetrators.
Therefore, as peace-builders design memory projects, they must remember that the greatest determinant factor in healing and memory are the victims themselves. Victims must be empowered to take control of their destiny. Memory projects must not be theoretical and abstract but must improve the wellbeing and situations of victims.
Only then can victims hope to move on with their lives.
The first and most important is that victims will never forget what they went through no matter how many interventions are implemented for them. The second is that the ability to cope with memory is subjective and varies from one individual to another. It is also dependent on the individual experiences that each victim underwent. Thirdly, the ability of victims to cope with their memories is enhanced when their alleged tormentors face justice. Justice, however, must be holistic and not simply focus on punishing perpetrators, but also on repairing the harm done to victims for example through restoration of their livelihoods.
Mr Owor Ogora is a former head of the Justice and Reconciliation Project and an independent researcher and consultant.
LIRA – Two days before the United Nations designated International Day of the Disappeared, families from across northern Uganda will come together on Friday, 28 August 2015, in Lira town to remember their missing loved ones. The day-long event is part of a ‘sub-regional dialogue’ on missing persons as a result of conflict in northern Uganda organised by the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP). Families of the missing, civil society as well as religious and traditional leaders from Teso, Lango, Acholi and West Nile sub-regions will meet at Apostolic Social Center for a procession from Lira district headquarters, a symbolic candle-lighting ceremony and a dialogue.
“The sub-regional dialogue is important, first, to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared,” JRP Community Mobilisation Team Leader Isaac Okwir Odiya said. “It is also an opportunity for stakeholders in northern Uganda to join hands to create awareness about the disappeared and to identify the means to address the enormous legacy of disappearances in Uganda,” he added.
The dialogue is being held as part of a joint campaign being run by the JRP and a collective of families of the missing known as ‘The Right to Know’ to document and promote awareness of the challenges facing missing persons and their families in northern Uganda. This year, the Right to Know campaign aims at ensuring national observance and commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared in Uganda.
The International Day of the Disappeared is commemorated annually on the 30th of August following the adoption of UN General Assembly resolution 65/209. In Uganda, thousands of civilians in northern Uganda were abducted and went missing as a result of systematic abductions of children and youth by the Lord’s Resistance Army and the National Resistance Army between 1986 and 2006. Despite being a UN General Assembly Member State, Uganda is yet to officially observe the International Day of the Disappeared.
About the Justice and Reconciliation Project: The Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) promotes locally sensitive and sustainable peace in Africa’s Great Lakes region by focusing on the active involvement of grassroots communities in local-level transitional justice. Formerly a partnership of the Gulu District NGO Forum and the Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada, JRP has played a key role in transitional justice in Uganda since 2005, through seeking to understand and explain the interests, needs, concerns and views of the communities affected by war between the Lord‟s Resistance Army (LRA) and Government of Uganda (GOU). JRP became an independent NGO in 2010 with support from the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Kampala. For more information please visit http://www.justiceandreconciliation.com.
If you are in the Kitgum area please tune into Mighty Fire 91.5 FM between 6 and 7 pm today (26 August 2015) where JRP’s Grace Acan will be speaking about The Right to Know campaign on missing persons.
Just months after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and a team of investigators crisscrossed northern Uganda to drum up support for the proceedings against Dominic Ongwen, it has become evident that survivors of the more than two-decade LRA (1987-2008) insurgency find themselves at cross-roads in their pursuit for justice. The sad fact is, they may not even ever realise it. In a recent meeting of victims and survivors from across Acholi and Lango sub-regions held at Olango Conference Hall in Gulu organised by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, the victims’ representatives made more demands than the ICC was ever designed to deliver on. The meeting was convened to discuss inter alia what justice for international crimes means for northern Uganda, how the different communities in Lango and Acholi feel about the trial of Ongwen and what role they see the trial playing in fostering reconciliation and other imperatives. Instead it vividly demonstrated a major mismatch between survivor expectations and what the ICC can actually offer, with more and more communities in the region positioning themselves as supporting the ICC and disengaging from other transitional justice processes in the hopes of benefiting from Ongwen’s trial. Not only are all the affected sub-regions Teso, Lango, Acholi and West Nile expecting direct compensation (court reparations) from the ICC if or when Dominic Ongwen gets convicted, they also have fundamentally misplaced beliefs that the ICC is best placed to facilitate processes such as reconciliation, truth-seeking and traditional justice mechanisms in the affected areas. The risk here is that by wrongly pinning their hopes on a court established to prosecute rather than to reconcile, local communities will unintentionally further weaken an already faltering national process to develop an appropriate transitional justice policy and legislation. Communities are right to want comprehensive (transitional) justice based on accountability, truth seeking, compensation, reparations and reconciliation, but they are wrong to think that the ICC can deliver on all of these. The fact that they are even trying to do so is a damming indictment of the government’s transitional justice development process that has dragged on for eight years and, despite being now on its sixth draft, has yet to be finalised, let alone operationalised in support of the survivors of northern Uganda and other regions of the country. Stephen Oola, s.oola@refugeelawproject.org
Thirty-Four years since the Ombaci massacre in the Northern Uganda district of Arua, more questions than answers abound.
As victims, their families and leaders in Arua came together this year to commemorate the massacre in which the Uganda National Liberation Army(UNLA) soldiers-in pursuit of Uganda army rebels- killed more than 100 innocent civilians- concerns over reparation, reconciliation and the plight of several poor survivors still linger.
“We hope that finally something can be done to address these issues,” Stephen Acidri, the coordinator of a recently founded Ombaci Massacres Survivors Association said.
The Massacre
On Wednesday, June 24, 1981 UNLA soldiers rounded up Arua town in pursuit of rebels and former soldiers of the Uganda Army.
This brought about tension.
“The soldiers attacked homes, looted property and drove us from our homes,” 84 year old Ismail Saidi, a survivor, said.
In order to escape the wrath of the soldiers, Saidi and many people sought refuge inside the premises of St. Joseph’s college Ombaci and the Catholic Mission nearby.
“It is while hiding here for our lives that we were attacked by the soldiers who thought we were concealing rebels and or collaborating with them,” Saidi, who lost a daughter and two nephews recalls.
“They came into the store where we were hiding and showered us with bullets, they went into the carpentry, the church and other places around the school and the mission killing people.”
After about four hours of shooting, nearly 100 people were dead and several others injured and abandoned at a makeshift camp that had been erected by the Red Cross.
No amends
Since the massacre, Acidri says very little has been done to heal the wounds of one of the most brutal attacks on innocent civilians in Uganda’s recent history.
“Not much has been done to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to book. No efforts have been taken to establish a truth and reconciliation process to facilitate the healing in this attack that hurt so many people and divided communities. What’s more, there has been no attempt to establish responsibility for these crimes,” Acidri says.
On the ground in Arua, many people claiming to be survivors are coming up and seeking to be compensated. And yet, without clear mechanisms to authenticate the claimants, the identification process risks being taken advantage of. Serious doubts also remain over any plans to hold perpetrators accountable for the human rights abuses that were committed in this gruesome murder.
Poor documentation
The Uganda Human Rights Commission has made recent visits to the site where the massacre took place but has yet to come up with a comprehensive report.
However, a 2013 report by the Justice and Reconciliation project (JRP) indicates that the government soldiers at the time (UNLA) violated international law for which the government of Uganda is still responsible.
“The murders and looting clearly amount to crimes against humanity…” says the report which adds: “What makes the Ombaci massacre such an agregious violation was the deliberate targeting of civilians, a religious mission and of clergy and International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) personnel, who are explicitly protected in instances of non-international armed conflict such as this one under Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.”
Rt. Rev Fredrick Drandua, the retired bishop of Arua Catholic Diocese- who was an influential leader in Arua at the time of the massacre says that for all the atrocities that took place then, “there is need for all of us to rise above the bad days and forge ahead by doing good, forgiving and forgetting.”
The Justice and Reconciliation Project now has three job opportunities for a Head of Office, a Documentation Officer and an M&E Assistant. Visit http://justiceandreconciliation.com/about/jobs-internships/ for more information about the positions and how to apply!
Remember: The deadline for all three positions is August 30, 2015!
