The ICC

ICC MAY RUIN UGANDA’S CHANCE FOR PEACE

By PAUL AMORU- March 14
The International Criminal Court should give way for the signing of a Final Peace Accord between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army.
We have so far seen a step in the right direction, as the ICC Judges on March10, met with the LRA delegation for the first time in The Hague. This meeting must bear fruit.
The victims of the 22 year old conflict are tired. It is peace they crave for and nothing else will make sense. Let the ICC show flexibility.
Ugandans are keenly watching this space.
The Daily Monitor, March12 reported that the ICC could be softening stand after meeting the LRA team and has asked the Government Uganda to furnish it with information on the competence of the proposed war crimes courts to try indicted LRA leaders locally.
This development follows an agreement between the LRA and the government to try the rebel leader Joseph Kony in a special division of Uganda’s High Court.
However, the ICC should first rescind its warrants of arrests against Kony and his commanders. LRA leader Joseph Kony has vowed not to pen his signature on the (FPA) unless the ICC withdraws his warrants.
March 28 has already been set for the signing of the Final Peace Accord, but the ICC indictment is the obstacle, as the ICC Chief Prosecutor, Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo seems to be reading from a different script.
His grandstanding is not welcome.
The so called “international community”, for 20 years, folded their hands and watched this conflict escalate, only to show up now.
And UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland is on record describing the situation in northern Uganda as “the biggest neglected humanitarian emergency in the world”
“Where else in the world have there been 20,000 kidnapped children? Where else in the world have 90 per cent of the population in large districts been displaced? Where else in the world do children make up 80 per cent of the terrorist insurgency movement?” These were Mr Egeland’s rhetoric questions to the UN Security Council last year.
Shame, the UN Security Council had no answer.
Statistics from Ugandan-CAN and Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda show that 1.8 million people were still living in the IDP camps by last year.

And the rate of death from this war was three times higher than in Iraq following the US invasion in 2001.

About 737 schools in Northern Uganda, representing 60 per cent, are not functioning and about 250,000 children in the IDP camps have no education at all. By all standards, these facts are devastating.
Ugandans deserve a chance to pick up the remaining pieces of their lives. There is no wisdom in keeping the over 2 million people in this inhuman condition, just because the ICC wants the neck of two people.
Besides, who is the angel here?
The Uganda People's Defense Forces, whose primary mandate is to protect civilians, has not only failed to prevent attacks and abductions by the LRA, but has also perpetrated grave abuses against civilians that include arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killing, torture and rape in a climate of impunity.
President Museveni nursed his blind ego for two decades and did not want to talk peace. But the military option failed and that is why President Museveni sought the intervention of the ICC.

Sadly, the ICC cannot on its own effect the arrests and relies on the corporations of the member states. But Ugandans cannot afford to hope against hope.

Besides, the ICC’s role has since been overtaken by events. Firstly, the Ugandan government who run to the ICC now feels able to deal with the Kony issue locally.

Secondly, the people of Uganda want a peace and reconciliation process for a complete national healing, like it happened in South Africa, and now taking root in the neighbouring Kenya.

I cannot figure out Mr Ocampo’s wisdom when he says the ICC is not able to pull back and give Uganda, a sovereign nation at such, a benefit of doubt to find a local solution to its problems.

The ICC was established under the Rome Statute which in principle assigns the Court a role that is complementary to national systems, and comes in when a member State is unwilling or unable to carry out the investigation or prosecution.

The preamble of the same Rome Statute recognises that the ICC should be a last resort.

As it stands now, Ugandans still have several options and indeed are waiting the signing of the Final peace deal between government and the LRA on March 28.

The ICC will gravely error if it does not consider deferral of the indictments in the interest of true and meaningful justice for the people of Uganda.
Article 53 of the Rome Statute specifically allows for deferral of prosecution if such a deferral is in the "interests of victims" or other "interests of justice."
And under Article 53(4), the Prosecutor can reconsider a decision at any time "based on new facts or information."
In an article published in the Daily Nation of 24 February this year, a Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng cautioned President Kibaki who was hiding behind a constitution he earlier flawed to a peace deal.

“Man was not made for the law, but rather the law for man.”

Mr Ochieng said the Jesus of gospel serves the spirit of the law, not the letter of it. Thus, he often deliberately breaks the law so as to make its spirit more manifest.

Let’s not stand on the way of peace because we want to protect the letter in the principles of the Rome statute of the ICC.

If the people decide that the best way to deal with their past is to forgive all those who have committed crimes against civilians- it must be respected.

Paul Amoru
pamoru@nation.co.ke
Trainee Journalist
Nairobi