Accountability and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda.

Source: (2010) In, Sharanjeet Parmar, et. al, eds., Children and transitional justice: Truth-telling, accountability and reconciliation. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. pp. 231-292.

This chapter examines crimes committed against children and
youth, in particular sexual and gender-based crimes against girls
and young women, in northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance
Army (LRA) over the past twenty years. It raises some of the issues
currently being debated on accountability for crimes committed by
children in armed conflict, adequate responses to sexual violence
and inhuman acts, and the appropriateness and efficacy of
traditional justice or judicial redress in these situations. The authors – Khristopher Carlson with Dyan Mazurana and
Prudence Acirokop – present two separate essays that address
traditional, national and international responses to the abductions,
systematic rape, sexual abuse, forced recruitment, enslavement and
forced labor that have been perpetrated by members of the LRA on
the children and youth of northern Uganda. After more than two
decades of atrocities, affected communities, the national
Government and international justice processes have begun to
consider how to bring those responsible to justice and ensure some
level of redress for the victims of these crimes and human rights
violations.(excerpt)