Victimisation and challenges to integration: Transitional justice response to children born of war in northern Uganda

• Date: 04 March 2021
• Published date: 04 March 2021
• Author: Nanyunja, B.
• Pages: 579-596
• Citation: (2020) 33 SACJ 579
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/SACJ/v33/i3a4

Victimisation and challenges to

integration: Transitional justice

response to children born of war

in northern Uganda

B NANYUNJA*

ABSTRACT

Uganda witnessed one of its worst con icts between 1986 and 2 007. The

conict in nort hern Uganda was between t he government troops and the

Lord’s Resistance Army (LR A). Serious crimes were comm itted against the

civilian population. Women and gi rls were abducted by the rebels to serve

as sex slaves and children were born a s a result. After the con ict, these

children’s integration has not b een well received by their communities.

It has not been properly add ressed by the state operatives either. The

children are di smissed as perpet rators of the conict. T heir return has

been marred with s tigmatisation and ostrac ism, forcing them to live on

the margins of soc iety. After the conict , a National Transitional Justice

Policy was passed. The overarc hing framework aims at addre ssing justice

and reconciliation th rough inter alia social reintegration. However, it leaves

an accountability gap. The f ramework largely departs f rom the needs of

this part icular community: acknowledg ing their existence and integ ration.

The purpose of th is article is to identif y transitional jus tice opportunities

and how these accommodate and advance accountabi lity, integration and

reconciliation in addre ssing victimisation concer ns of the war children.

Ultimately, it argues that addres sing the abuses of the affected com munities

will ease so cial [re]integration .

1 Introduction

It is a fact that during armed conict, lives are lost but also created.

The latter is partly made possible when sexual gender-based violence

(SGBV) is used as a weapon of war.1 The character of the conict in

northern Uganda can attest to this given the violations of human rights

that prevailed in its wake. The conict between Lord’s Resistance

Army (LRA) rebels led by Joseph Kony and the government soldiers

– the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) witnessed mass killings,

* LLB (MUK), Dip. LP (LDC), LL M (UWC and Humboldt Universit ät zu Berlin); Legal

Researcher, Uganda Lega l Information Ins titute, Uganda.

1 B Rohwerder ‘Reintegration of c hildren born of war time rape’ (2019) 7–8, available at

https:/reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/628_Reintegration-of-

Children-Born-of-Wartime-Rape.pdf.

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(2020) 33 SACJ 579

© Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd

rape, pillaging, abductions and kidnappings at the hands of the

rebels.2 Although the LRA’s manifesto was based on the Biblical Ten

Commandments, their actions proved to advance a political agenda.

The conict revolved around abductions of the civilian population

which the rebel group systematically employed as a policy, partly for

purication purpose to create a new Acholi tr ibe3 and partly to replenish

the rebel ranks.4 Forced marriages and rape were employed to full

this agenda. Many abducted young women and girls were victims of

sexual exploit ation.5 They thus produced children to materialise the

LRA agenda leading to the bir th of about 2 000 children.6 Children

born out of these situations have come to be known as Children Born

of War (CBOW), an enduring consequence of conict. They have in the

past been ignored as victims of conict but are now identied though

narrowly. The War and Children Identity Project (WCIP) describes them

to mean ‘children born as a result of sexualised violence’ employed

as a war strategy.7 In the case of Uganda, these include those born

to abducted mothers and rebel fathers.8 There are others born out

of SGBV occasioned on their mothers while living in the Internally

Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The children have factually not been

treated as victims of con ict but a consequence thereof and are caught

up in a scenario where victimisation is extended to them.

There have been post-conict effort s through transitional justice

with victim-centric claims and an ‘interest’ approach that focusses

more on peace processes than the concept of responsibility and victim

identity.9 These have in their ambit to restore recovery largely unnoticed

the children born of con ict. Initially, CBOW are not recognised as

victims of conict but only come up when the discussion is bent

on the suffering of their mothers, the primary victims of conict in

2 Human Rights Watch ‘Ugand a: Army and the rebel s commit atrocities i n the north.

International C riminal Cou rt must investigate abus es on both sides’ Human Rights

Watch, 2 0 September 2005, avai lable at https:// www.hrw.org/ news/2005/09/20/

uganda-army-an d-rebels-commit-atrocities -north, accessed on 27 August 2019.

3 Justice and Reconcili ation Project ‘We are all t he same: Experiences of ch ildren

born into LR A captivity’ (2015) 2, available at http://www.justice andreconciliation.

org/publications/field-notes/2015/we-are-all-the-same-experiences-of-children-

born-into- lra-captivity/.

4 J Annan et al ‘ The state of female youth in no rthern Uganda: Fi ndings from the

survey of war affec ted youth: Phase II’ (2008) 1–2.

5 These served as re bel wives among other task s.

6 Justice and Reconcili ation Project op cit (n3) 3.

7 IC Mochmann and SU B ergen, ‘Children bor n of war: The life cour se of children

fathered by Germa n soldiers in Norway and De nmark during W WII – some

empirical resu lts’ (2008) 33 Hist Social Res 3 47.

8 Justice and Reconcili ation Project op cit (n3) 2.

9 MT Labonte ‘Complex polit ical victims’ H- Net Reviews , October 2007, available at

http://www.h- net.org / reviews/ showre v.php?id=13728, accessed on 23 August 2019.

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