Transitional Justice Forum

Roco Wat in Uganda

Posted by Helena Cobban at 14:01 | TrackBack

Dr. Erin Baines of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, has just sent me links to two extremely interesting-looking studies recently produced (or in one case, co-produced) by researchers at the Institute, including herself. Both studies concern the strife-torn situation in northern Uganda, which TJF old-timers will recall has had some good coverage here before. The publications Baines sent me add considerably to this discussion.

TJF regulars will recall that the conflict in northern Uganda is the "situation" regarding which the ICC has issued its first-ever indictments; they are against five leaders of the insurgent "Lords Resistance Army" (LRA). ICC judges issued arrest warrants in connection with these indictments in July 2005-- but these warrants were kept sealed until the Government of Uganda revealed their existence in October. (For the collection of public ICC documents regarding this situation, see here. Scroll down for the arrest warrants there.)

The reports Baines sent are:

(1) Northern Uganda - Human Security Update, of May 2005; and

(2) Roco Wat I Acoli; Restoring Relationships in Acholi-land: Traditional Approaches to Justice and Reintegration, of September 2005.

The first of these reports, written by Baines, Heidi Rose, and Irene Sattarzadeh, was a status report, as of May 2005, into the effects that the investigations conducted by the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) were having within the badly stressed communities of northern Uganda. It is fairly short-- 12 pages of text in the PDF file there, plus four pages containing a helpful Chronology covering February-May 2005.

The writers describe some of the tensions and suspicions that the OTP's investigations had caused in northern Uganda. One of these was that the "low profile" approach adopted by the OTP in its investigatory work had generated "local and national rumours regarding the intentions of the international justice body. At least one of these rumours was that the ICC was working on the behest of the Government of Uganda, and was therefore synonymous with those who favour a military approach to resolving the conflict."(p.4)

(I note that on p.6 of this official ICC document, dated 13 October 2005, a panel of judges noted, "that OTP investigations and assessments of allegations made against the military forces of the Government of Uganda are ongoing;" (para 24.) But will these inevstigations ever gain any more momentum than the ICTR-OTP's "special investigations" into allegations of governmental wrongdoing in Rwanda ever managed to win? In both cases, the governments concerned have effective control over the entire territory on which the OTP conducts its investigations, and over the appearance or non-appearance of vital prosecution witnesses...)

That first Liu Institute paper also provides a sketch of the traditional forms of conflict resolution/ social healing that are practiced by the Acholi people, who have been the community worst affected by LRA-government violence; and makes some recommendations regarding the conflict. The recommendations all look very sensible to me. Some, of course, have been "overtaken by events"-- most notably by unsealing of the arrest warrants.

The second Liu Institute publication, Roco Wat I Acoli, is somewhat different. At 145 pages (including back-matter), it is a detailed and collaboratively produced account of the content and current status of "traditional"-- or should I say neo-traditional-- conflict resolution techniques among the Acholi, and their relevance to the challenges of peacemaking and longer-term peacebuilding in the current context. It was produced by Baines and other Liu Institute researchers in active collaboration with the Gulu District NGO Forum and the Ker Kwaro Acholi (KKA), which is the Contemporary Institution of the Acholi.

To me, this looks like an excellent piece of work that can make a huge contribution to enriching the whole way that "transitional justice" is conceived of, and discussed, within the global discourse...

I have only had a chance to read through it very partially and, as yet, imperfectly. But in its careful consideration of the actual, social-healing practices undertaken by the Acholi people during the present, terrible times of civil strife, it reminds me hugely of Carolyn Nordstrom's pioneering work A Different Kind of War Story, which did the same for some different communities in Mozambique, during the latter part of the ghastly 15-year civil war there. But Roco Wat I Acoli is not merely "ethnography" done by an outsider. It is also quite clearly the product of an engaged collaboration between the Liu Institute researchers and their Ugandan partners. It describes not only the social-healing practices undertaken by the Acholi traditional healers and Elders, but also the attempts of the KKA to preserve those practices and upgrade their application-- at a time when the survival of the practices and of the Acholi people as Acholi has come under very real threat. Beyond that, it tries to "unpack" many of the social-healing practices, to see how they work and what their relevance to the community's mutliple current challenges might be. (Nordstrom also attempted to do this, in her consideration of the healing undertaken by various curandeiros and curandeiras in Mozambique.)

One apparent difference I noted between the Acholi practices as described by Baines and the Acholi people whom she worked with, and the traditional practices in Mozambique as described by Nordstrom and others (most notably Alcinda Honwana and Joao Paulo Borges Coelho, e.g. here) is that the social-healing practices in Mozambqiue stress performative rituals of reintegration, and the Mozambican people in general are very wary of the risks of "bringing violence back to life" if it should ever be explicitly spoken of... As a result, the explicit "telling" of the story of the violence in the forensic, details-focused way required in a court of law or a truth commission is something that Mozambicans try to avoid completely during their rituals. But as I understand it, according to Baines's description of the healing processes used by the Acholi, there, the reintegration does depend on truth-telling and some form of confession. So maybe it is more similar in that respect to the reintegrative processes undertaken by the (UN-supported) Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) in East Timor, which focused on truth-establishment as well as social healing (i.e., the "Reception" of former miscreants).

It strikes me there is huge potential for productive south-south learning, brainstorming, and capacity-building on all these issues.

For those TJF readers who are operating with slow internet links and can't get to read and download the whole of the Roco Wat report, I have now uploaded the Executive Summary.

Anyway, big thanks to Erin Baines for sending along these really interesting papers. These kinds of processes seem to me to make a huge contribution to the wellbeing of human communities reeling from almost unimaginably damaging violence. But they get pitifully little attention of any kind-- and even less respectful attention-- from anyone in the politically powerful nations of the north... And, as compared with a lavishly funded, lawyer-heavy institution like the ICC, almost no international funding at all.

One last note. This work on northern Uganda underlines yet again-- as I noted here recently, with respect to Rwanda-- that religious institutions and their worldviews and practices make a contribution to post-atrocity social healing, and thus to the ability of communities to escape from the damaging consequences of atrocious violence, that is too often under-recognized in today's discourse on global policy. I actually also wrote about this question more broadly in the latest (Dec. 2005) issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion-- you can read that text here. So I'm really delighted to see another great case study in this "religion" corner of the TJ field!