Lawfare: where justice meets peace.

• Author: Ogoola, James
• Position: Symposium: Lawfare

1. INTRODUCTION

   It is a singular honor to speak at this symposium on lawfare. I thank most deeply the organizers of the symposium for their forward-looking stance in choosing this evocative topic for a theme. In many senses, lawfare is the opposite, indeed, the very antithesis of warfare. "Warfare" is the ancient, primitive, and largely discredited mode of dispute resolution between nations and among peoples. "Lawfare," on the other hand, has all the civilized undertones of letting the law fare well in the struggle to achieve peaceful resolution of disputes. It has the ring of due process, of the doctrine of the rule of law, and rule of reason--of the principles of fairness, equity, and justice in bringing a peaceful end to a violent conflict. We have Case Western Reserve University's erudite minds to thank for this creativity and genius of christening our theme.

   Permit me, then, to add to this creative form here at Case Western my own spurious contribution to the eminent topic before us. I have titled my paper: "Where Justice Meets Peace." A little introduction could be appropriate to provide a brief background to the situation in Uganda, which is the backdrop for this thesis.

   For close to twenty-four years now, there has been a hot and horrid war raging in Northern Uganda, that is the part to the south of Sudan and the west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The war has seen innocent millions butchered or bludgeoned to death, the stomachs of pregnant women ripped open with crude machetes (a cousin of the sword), lips, limbs, and ears of old men lobbed off their emaciated torsos, the noisy tongues of the inquisitive, yanked (root, stem, and all) out of the garrulous mouth. (1) Young boys, as young as ten, caught in a spiral of mass abductions and transformed into the war's killer monsters, for example, the "child soldiers." (2) Young girls, as young as twelve, kidnapped en masse from local schools and forced into sexual slavery on the brutal war front to become babies-bearing-babies, impregnated by butcher generals of the bush--thereby begging the Hobson's question of: "To bear or not to bear the child alive"? (3) Either way, the poignant trauma of it all is simply unbearable.

   This specter of horror continued without cessation over the Greater North of Uganda, and in chunks of the North West, and parts of the East of the country flowing over into the neighboring Countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. (4) This way, a local rebellion within Uganda's borders ballooned into an international war fought on multiple battlefields across international boundaries. Truly, the crimes committed in this theater of war too, have explored into international crimes by any definition--crimes without borders, violations beyond borders.

   The land, weary of mass slaughter and mass maiming, the landscape, littered with hideous mounds of the fallen, and hapless multitudes of the widowed and the orphaned, cried out in lamentation for peace, almost peace at any price. The Juba Peace Talks were orchestrated by the two principals: the Uganda Army of the Government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of the Bush warlords; and supported by the international community. (5) Agenda item No. 3 of the Juba Peace Talks sought to establish Three Pillars for Peace in Northern Uganda: (i) a formal Court mechanism of largely punitive justice, to punish impunity; (ii) a Traditional system of, largely restorative justice, to restore harmony and co-existence through apology and forgiveness; and (iii) a Truth-telling mechanism/forum, to get the entire populace debate the whys, hows, and wherefores of the underlying causes of Uganda's interminable wars, rebellions, insurrections, insurgencies, upheavals, civil strife, coups d'etat, etcetera. (6) As the negotiating positions of the protagonists became more and more intractable, the desperate question became between peace without justice or justice without peace?

   The choice for the country was clear. We needed both--for one without the other would be but a mirage: unattainable, unsustainable, and unfulfillable! Accordingly, the architects and diplomats and legal agencies crafting the peace deal in Juba had to find that elusive point at which justice meets peace. Difficult decisions were made on the spot to have the widest possible consultations on the issues, as well as for deep-seated research into the problem. A blue ribbon Transitional Justice Working Group was formed under my Chairmanship as Principal Judge of the Country, comprising all relevant Government Ministries and agencies, as well as the legal fraternity in Uganda (both Public and Private practitioners), Academia, the Civil Society, the Elders throughout the countryside, Religious Leaders, and all other similar stakeholders. (7) The Group, ably assisted by international legal experts, notably the Public International Law & Policy Group's Professors Michael Scharf of Case Western University and Michael...