Child victim, loyal war spirit medium or war criminal: shifting the geography and logic of historical accountability in Dominic Ongwen’s ICC trial

ABSTRACT

The complications which played out in ascribing an identity: victim, perpetrator or both, in Lord’s Resistance Army’s (LRA) child abduction victim turned Warlord, Dominic Ongwen, calls for the rethinking of the international criminal justice system. While law operates in black and white, politics is fraught with and at times thrives in proverbial grey areas. In order for justice to be done, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) geography and logic must be shifted epistemologically from the Global North to the sites where these atrocities were committed. The Roman-Dutch law logic, which largely informes the ICC’s jurisprudence, makes little existential logic to the thousands of the victims of the LRA’s over three decades of operations spanning over four countries. I argue against the token involvement of victims of human rights abuse by advocating for the deployment of local justice systems such as mato oput, as they not only resonate with the victims but also with the perpetrators, both herein termed survivors. Had mato oput been instituted first, the victim turned perpetrator complexity would have been addressed as the agent would have been cleansed, pardoned, and reintegrated into the community.

KEYWORDS:

• International criminal court
• human rights
• child soldier
• warlord
• traditional transitional justice mechanisms
• survivors’ justice
• war crimes
• Dominic Ongwen

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ongwen case, Prosecutor v Ongwen (Dominic), Decision on the confirmation of charges against Dominic Ongwen, Case no ICC-02/04-01/15, ICC-02/04-01/15-422-Red, ICL 1681 (ICC 2016), 23 March 2016, International Criminal Court [ICC]; Pre-Trial Chamber II [ICC].

2. Mato oput is an Acholi traditional restorative peacebuilding and reconciliation mechanism. Its name comes from the Acholi language which literally mean to drink a bitter portion of the leaves of the oput tree. It does not aim to apportion blame but to restore social harmony. The logic is that by accepting to drink this bitter herb, the two conflicting parties accept the bitterness of the past and promise never to taste such bitterness again.

3. Known as the principle of Open justice, it was derived from the case: Chief Justice of New South Wales. R v Sussex Justices; Ex parte Macarthy [1924] 1 KB 256, 259 (‘R v Sussex Justices).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Everisto Benyera

Everisto Benyera is an Associate Professor of African Politics in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. He researches and publishes on community-based, non-state transitional justice, human rights, transitology, and decoloniality. His edited books are (1), (2021). The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Recolonisation of Africa: The Coloniality of Data. Routledge: London and New York. ISBN 9780367744151.(2), (ed.). (upcoming). Africa and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Curse or Cure? Springer: Cham. (3), (ed.). (2020). Breaking the Colonial ‘Contract’: From Oppression to Autonomous Decolonial Futures. Lexington: Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London. ISBN 9781793622730, (4), (ed.). 2020. Reimagining Justice, Human Rights and Leadership in Africa Challenging Discourse and Searching for Alternative Paths. Springer: Cham. ISBN 9783030251437, (5), (ed.). 2019. Indigenous, Traditional, and Non-State Transitional Justice in Southern Africa: Namibia and Zimbabwe. Lexington: Lanham, New York, and London. ISBN 9781498592826. He is also the editor of Politeia: The Journal of Political Sciences and Public Administration and Management.