Testing the scales: reconciliation and justice in the case of Uganda.

• Author: Goldberg, Jeremy
• Position: Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army - Book review

Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army Tim Allen (New York: Zed Books, 2006), 230 pages.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, once commented that northern Uganda was "the most forgotten crisis in the world." (1) To be sure, unfathomable stories periodically emerged--of mutilations, abductions, possessed fighters and child brides, but few were able to appreciate the scale of one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. That was the case, until the first warrants ever issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) were for the leaders of the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), for war crimes and crimes against humanity. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan remarked that the court's action sent "a powerful signal around the world that those responsible for such crimes will be held accountable for their actions." (2) As Tim Mien observes in Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army, the ICC had much to prove, and the Uganda case seemed clear-cut. As his meticulous book demonstrates, however, the situation in Uganda is hardly straightforward, with misperceptions of the rebels' actions, tensions between peace efforts and attempts to end impunity, and debates over the relative merits of traditional and local notions of justice and forgiveness. Allen's powerful work reminds us that much is at stake: not only the prospects of justice for the victims in northern Uganda, but also the very future of the ICC.

The emergence of the ICC follows an evolution of international legal norms and institutions after the Second World War. Allen specifically points to the appearance of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as critical to connecting international law with the idea of international criminal prosecution, and establishing war crimes and crimes against humanity as universal crimes. The treaty establishing the ICC was signed in Rome in 1998, and the court came into effect in 2002. Alien highlights many of the structural limitations of the ICC--which would shape how it would be perceived in Uganda. Since the court is not a creation of the UN Security Council, its efficacy relies on close relationships with governments. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, referred the LRA case to the ICC, contributing to a perception of bias, and raising...