ICC assures of compensation of LRA victims in Northern Uganda

LIRA– The International Criminal Court [ ICC ] has assured victims of the two decades Lord`s Resistance Army [LRA] rebellion in Northern Uganda of compensation.

Updating stakeholders on the progress of Dominic Ongwen`s appeal case at the ICC, they said the court has established a trust fund to compensate about 60,000-100,000 victims.

Early last year, the ICC sentenced Ongwen, a former child soldier who became one of the top commanders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of 61 cases of war crime and crime against humanity committed in northern Uganda.

Ongwen was among five top elusive LRA commanders that included Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odihambo and Raska Lukwiya indicted by the court in 2005.

But in 2015, he surrendered to the United State forces in the Central African Republic and repatriated to ICC to face trial. The court sentenced him to 25 years in jail.

Through his counsel Kryspus Ayena, Ongwen has since protested the verdicts saying he was kidnapped while on his way to school by the LRA, and brutalised.

He raised 90 grounds of appeal against the verdict and 11 against the sentence, alleging “legal, factual and procedural errors” by the Hague-based ICC.

Updating a total of 42 stakeholders at Gracious Palance hotel in Lira City, Martin Okwir, the ICC field outreach assistant, said the reparation of the victims still hangs in balance because the court is yet to announce the verdict.

“Reparation can only be paid in a situation where there is guilty verdicts since the appeal level has power to change the conviction or declare acquittal,” he said.

“If the appeal judges decide that Ongwen is not guilty of any of the 61 crimes he had been declared to having committed, it will affect the reparation,” he said.

He said again, if reparation is to be declared, the 122 assembly of member state parties through Trust Funds for Victims will work out modalities to start pay people affected by the war.

The Third Deputy Prime Minister of Lango Cultural Foundation, Tom Odur Anang, raised concerned over the number scheduled for reparation.

He said over two millions people were directly or indirectly affected by prolonged LRA war and the ICC initiative of reparation should consider all the victims in northern Uganda.

LRA began its rebellion against the government and the people in 1988 in northern Uganda.

It is said the outfit,emerged from the remnants of the Holy Spirit Movement army founded by Alice Auma Lakwena, a priestess and distant relative of Joseph Kony, the LRA leader.

Kony, a former catechist, capitalised on a power vacuum created by the defeat of resistance movements in the north, some of which abandoned their military campaigns and made peace with the government in the 1990s, to start the LRA.

The group first operated as the United Holy Salvation Army before it was named the Uganda Christian Army/Movement and eventually the LRA. It adopted this name some time in 1992.

The LRA gained a reputation for brutality as it waged an armed rebellion seeking to remove the government of Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, and rule the country on the Biblical ten commandments.

The vast majority of the LRA fighters came from the northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader.

Sustained government offensives have weakened the group’s numbers.

Forced recruitment

Most of the fighters were forcibly recruited into rebel ranks by fighters who often killed those who were reluctant to join the LRA or hacked off their ears, lips and limbs.

Although the group has been basically a ragtag army that often resorted to banditry to survive, it took the Ugandan government nearly two decades to rein them in.

After a series of defeats at the hands of the Ugandan military, the LRA sought sanctuary in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC].

There, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior researcher Anneke Van Woudenberg, they have become a “regional problem spread between three countries” – the DRC, Sudan and the Central African Republic [CAR].

Part of the reason the Ugandan government had difficulty defeating the LRA was because of the military support they were allegedly receiving from the Sudanese government.

Sudan says that Uganda supported the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army/Movement, which fought the Khartoum government for decades until they signed a peace deal in January 2005.

‘Protected villages’

Women and children have borne the brunt of the LRA. In 1996, the LRA raided a girl’s school and herded scores of students off into the bushes.

Some of the students died in captivity while others were later freed.

Female abductees were often forced to become wives of the rebels and some contracted Aids from their “husbands”.

The government struggled to protect villagers from the LRA, eventually setting up what it called “protected villages” to house internally displaced people.

Although the camps were within the army’s areas of operation, the LRA occasionally attacked the IDP camps and massacred civilians.

In 2005, the ICC in The Hague indicted Kony – along with several of his senior commanders – for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The indictment was a sticking a point in negotiations – which began in 2006 – brokered by the southern Sudan government between the LRA and the Ugandan government to try to end the conflict peacefully.

Irrevocable warrant

The LRA wanted their leaders to be tried by Ugandan courts, but the ICC has maintained that once the arrest warrants are issued, they cannot be taken back.

The court also doubted the independence of Ugandan courts and their ability to deliver justice of the kind that meets international standards.

Kony never turned up for the talks, often sending representatives to the talks.

The talks collapsed in 2008 after the LRA and the government accused each other of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

By this time the LRA did not have any more bases in Uganda and the rebels were holed up in the jungles of the DRC.

In December 2008, a major offensive was launched against Kony by a joint force of Ugandan, Rwandan and Congolese troops, but he escaped and remains at large.

Since 2008, the LRA has killed more than 2,400 people and abducted more than 3,400, according to the US State Department.

The UN estimates that over 380,000 people are displaced across CAR, the DRC and South Sudan as a result of LRA activity.

In 2009, US President Barack Obama signed into law the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, legislation aimed at stopping Joseph Kony and the LRA.

A year later in November, Obama delivered the strategy to disarm Kony and the LRA.

On October 2011, the US president announced that he would deploy 100 combat-equipped advisors to Uganda to help efforts against the LRA.

The US also offered bounties of up to US$5m each for Kony and some of his top LRA aides in April 2013.

Uganda troops captured 19 LRA rebels in CAR in December 2013, which was considered to be a sizeable victory in the hunt for members of the notorious group.

And the Pentagon announced in March that it would send four aircraft, and the 150 troops needed to maintain them, to hunt for Kony in South Sudan, CAR, Uganda and the DRC.

Additional reporting by agencies

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