Washington, DC — The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced the launch of a formal investigation to see if potential crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed in Uganda in the war that is being waged in the north of the country by a rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The ICC is going back to July 1, 2002 to conduct its investigation, which was prompted by a letter from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor in December 2003.
Human Rights Watch's (HRW) Pascale Kimbale spoke with AllAfrica's Elizabeth Phillips about the decision to investigate the situation in northern Uganda. Kambale has worked on human rights cases for many years in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He received a fellowship through Human Rights Watch to research West African human rights commissions and wrote several chapters in the Human Rights Watch 2001 Report.
How is HRW supporting the ICC's investigation?
We are working with our Ugandan NGO colleagues, as much as we can to [include] organizations of victims. There are many victim organizations in Uganda, and we are very concerned with the [effect on] children. This will be a huge issue during this investigation, and so we are working with our Ugandan partners to ensure that the children, who have been both victims and perpetrators in many cases, are not hurt during the course of this investigation.
Why did HRW and others urge the ICC to investigate the situation in Uganda?
We believe that broadly speaking, the ICC investigation will have some positive effect on this conflict situation. This is a conflict that has been going on for the last 16 or 17 years. [I am] not an expert in military issues, but every expert in the field believes there is no workable military solution to this conflict. Every peaceful attempt to settle this conflict has failed, including the NUPI - the U.S.-supported Northern Ugandan Peace Initiative. We think there is a judicious solution to this conflict because you need to bring to justice people on both sides, particularly people who have committed these horrendous crimes.
How does the conflict in northern Uganda compare to others you have seen?
I've been an African human rights activist for long enough and I have witnessed conflict situations on the four corners of Africa, and I have not seen anything like this. You have three-quarters of the population in northern Uganda that are displaced.
Now people are talking about Darfur, and rightly so. The press brings the international community's attention to Darfur, but there has been very little press on the situation in northern Uganda for many reasons. I hope that the ICC investigation will also bring some attention to this helpless situation in northern Uganda.
And I'm happy to say that, in the Office of the Prosecutor in Hague, they are aware of this particular mission of theirs. Many believe that theirs is not simply a mechanic, judicial mission: come in, investigate, arrest a couple of people and go back to the Hague and prosecute them. Many of them, and the prosecutors particularly, see that as [they are] prosecuting [and] investigating, they are working with UN agencies, UN relief agencies, and the government, and other governments across the continent, to bring relief, to bring attention, [and] to work with the press. We support that, because there is no fixed and mechanic solution to the Ugandan conflict.
What actions are likely to be taken when the investigation is complete?
That is for the investigators to respond to. But we recently met with the team of ICC investigators in Hague - the first time in April, and the second a few weeks ago. We have witnessed a real involvement, a real change in the attitude, knowledge of the situation and awareness [of] the complexity of the situation.
Many of the investigators, have a tendency to think of this conflict as a black-and-white situation, where you have on one side evil people and [on the other] good people. I think they are getting to know the situation [and] that they are getting involved in the details of the situation. They are now speaking to many activists on the ground in Uganda, both peace activists and Ugandan human rights activists, [and] they are now more and more aware of the complexities of the situation. Many people of Hague believe for the first time that the Uganda situation will be easier to go through than the Congo Ituri situation. They are now getting more involved in the situation. They see how complicated [and] how complex the situation is. That's good news.
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On the other hand, the northern communities have been victims of this situation. [They] have seen their children abducted, and their livestock pillaged by the same children who were abducted. So you don't need the ICC investigation to be a third cause of pain [and] suffering for these communities. And yet, there is that potential for the ICC investigation to inflict more pain than [it] relieves. So you need to be very careful. And that is the message that we bring to Hague and the investigators. While we support the investigation, we are also conveying the message that one needs to be very careful, not to hurt the very communities that have been twice victims of the conflict.
