Read our report, Complicating Victims and Perpetrators in Uganda: On Dominic Ongwen, and leave your views here...
This week: Comments by Helena Cobban, a Ugandan Expert, a legal expert....read them! add your own!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Reading this report recalls the sense one also gets from reading analyses of the conflict by the likes of Branch and Van Acker: that there is a significant gap between local and international narratives and perceptions of the conflict, and that this fact must have massive implications for the effectiveness of international policymaking. International narratives are forced into familiar discourses that lead to certain responses, which may or may not be the most helpful, or even helpful at all, in the long-term task of peacebuilding. Approaches to justice is just one example of this. Discerning the most problematic areas of disconnect is the easy part (though not at all easy); finding ways to communicate them while simultaneously generating broad public and political interest in a complex issue is what feels impossible.
I very much appreciated the synopsis of how overly simplified understandings of victim/perpetrator can lead to future conflict by dehumanizing certain sub-groups. I was reminded not only of the "victors justice" dynamics that fueled the genocide in Rwanda (and which continue to breed division and bitterness in the country), but also the situation of impoverished inner-city communities of color here in the United States. I think the "complex political victim" label could help inform a more reasonable discussion on crime and violence in our country if applied, for instance, to poor Black youth who perpetrate crimes.
ps, thanks to all who worked on this for producing such great, provocative work!
Thank you for sending this document. It is very interesting reading to say the least. I agree with you that much more thought and discussion is needed on the subject of justice that must take into account those like Ongwen who are victims as well as perpetrators, and on the ICC indictment list.
I have always thought that the ICC leapt too quickly to take on the war in northern Uganda, given that they only have jurisdiction from 2002, and they have shown no inclination to investigate both combatant sides of the war. The ICC seems to act as though there is only one guilty party - the LRA. In my view the atrocious conditions in which people were kept in the camps, from which so many hundreds if not thousands have died, the deliberate lack of protection, the corruption of the GOU and the UPDF, war profiteering by the elites, at the expense of lives and the destruction of culture constitute war crimes that should be punishable by the ICC if they are going to take on the case of northern Uganda.
I am not exonerating the LRA at all. However unless there is real justice I see trouble down the road. We have seen recently that the Government of Southern Sudan has asked the UPDF to leave its territory, because they have evidence that the UPDF were responsible for killings in S.Sudan and the UPDF were acting under the guise of being the LRA. This has been an MO the UPDF have used before. Not all the crimes committed were by the LRA.
The ICC and the international community have deliberately turned a blind eye to the machinations of President Museveni and his elites that are still costing lives in the north. I hope that the peace talks will resume at some point but on a more solid footing, with more transparency, and without the "attitude" on the part of Museveni that he be seen to have "defeated" the LRA . The currents beneath this war run very deep, and justice will be a complicated affair. Ongwen is indeed a symbol of the complicated victim/perpetrator.
Have you ever had the feeling that the LRA are just part of the genocide project of Museveni? This is the man who is spending $35 million dollars on a new private jet, and many more on a palace, while people in the north are still dying of diseases that result from lack of access to clean water, epidemic proportions. This is the man who is planning to criminalize the heads of families who do not or can not feed their families. They will really be able to feed them well from prison. I could go on...
The ICC thinks they are moving the peace process along by putting pressure on the LRA. I think a lot of pressure needs to be weighted on Museveni in order to get the peace talks back on track. In the meantime more thought needs to be given to those in the LRA who are both victims and perpetrators.
Good job, JRP, with delving into some of these thorny problems with the tendency of westerners to ascribe dyadic (Manichean) categories to individuals, box them into those categories, and then treat them accordingly!
I explored some of the problems with the 'victim/perpetrator dyad' (VPD) in my Spring 2002 essay on Rwanda and the ICTR in Boston Review (here. Then I unpacked the VPD a bit more thoroughly in my Amnesty after Atrocity book. In the latter, look especially at the last chapter, but also some of the preceding chapters.
I was fascinated when researching the 2002 article to discover the degree to which Hannah Arendt had much earlier expressed her qualms about the lingering effects of the application of the VPD, especially the uncritical ascription to all Germans of perpetratorhood-- and equally as much, the ascription to all Jews of "innocence." She is definitely well worth re-reading when exploring the ethical/philosophical implications of the VPD.
As, too, is Rama Mani's excellent book "Beyond Retribution", which explores the VPD from both a philosophical and a more empirically based policy-analysis perspective.
Mani's preference, rather than making that dyadic cut, is to consider that all who have been engaged in atrocious violence (from either a perpetrating or being perpetrated upon angle) are to some extent "victims" of the violence. Mine, building on Martha Minow, is to refer to them all as "survivors" of the violence. That term connotes a greater degree of active agency to these persons, in the sense of having lived through or even "overcome" the violence and its effects-- sur-vivre, etymologically. In Mozambique, those we interviewed for my research there used the term "affetados" (the affected) to refer to both victims and perpetrators. Most Mozambicans robustly reject the VPD and have a lively understanding that no, or very few),people become "perpetrators" without earlier having been "victims." I like the term affetados/as. But I prefer survivors for the agency-ascription reason given above.
Meanwhile, ways too many western rights activists who have never faced a moral dilemma much harder than deciding how many caffeine shots to put into their latte seem to remain quite happy to wield the sharp-- and tragically conflict-perpetuating-- knife of the VPD in their descriptions and analyses of atrocities committed in distant lands. They don't even know how lucky they are to live so distant from the world that Arendt, Mani, and others (including, I think, the good folks at JRP) have known so terrifyingly and understood so well.
Hi Erin,
Your article brings up valid points regarding victimhood but some of the criticisms against the Prosecutors office in regards to his not looking at the fuller picture of the victim, including identifying exonerating evidence, may be unwarranted. The prosecutor must focus on incriminating evidence, that is their job. The Prosecutor has an obligation to collect exonerating evidence as well and this may factor into his deciding on who to target for a warrant but it depends on the level of that persons responsibility and the gravity of what the suspect did. In most cases the exonerating evidence will be kept in a file to be disclosed to the defence. However, this will only happen when Ongwen is in Court and his defence team present that evidence, only then will the fuller picture come out.
Also you didn’t mention the new feature of the ICC which doesn’t exist in other common law courts, including Uganda, which is that the victims can participate as parties to the proceedings. This is an innovative feature of the Court borrowed from civil law systems which allows victims not to participate only as witnesses by the prosecution or defence but also bring whatever concerns they have before the judges. This could include some of the interests you mention and will all victim interests to be more broadly represented. This aspect was not mentioned in the report.
In regards to culpability you have a point in the article but you get the moral and legal argument a bit confused. The circumstances you speak of regarding superior orders and the context cannot serve as a defense against war crimes as such in international law, that was established in Nuremberg. All war crimes are carried out by subordinates pursuant to orders which if not executed may result in that persons punishment even death. That is not new in these cases. If it was a defence there would be very few successful cases indeed. The Article 31 you reference is there but you need to read the articles carefully as they are narrowly defined and refer to specific circumstances of self defence and proportionality.
What is a possible defence may be in the mental element ie if the illegality may not be so apparent to the subordinate if he did not act "willfully" in the sense of knowing or having reason to know that the order was illegal. However, his repeated behaviour even after the law was explained to him makes that argument weaker. Your argument would likely have more effect not in negating his criminal liability but in reducing his sentence as he may have committed the acts under duress—such as a threat to execute the subordinate for failure to carry out orders—that may be offered as mitigating circumstances and the judges will likely take that into consideration during sentencing but it does not negate the mental element of his liability if you see what I mean.
The dynamics you bring up are true but they are not new in criminology albeit in this case it is much more extreme. Walk around any prison today and you will find that those who beat their children are often those who were beaten themselves or those who become repeat offenders likely have had a troubled childhood. Victims and perpetrators are often linked in many ways and the stories are always difficult. How to deal with it is always the more difficult question.
Thanks for this field note, an important contribution to a growing discourse of critical voices deconstructing the naivety of the victim-pepetrator dyad and questioning the hegemony of law talk. Your analysis of Ongwen's life resonates loudly with fieldwork i conducted in sierra leone amongst former combatant, former prisoners and raises many of the same questions i struggle to answer - when the moral imperative is to survive what yardstick of justice can be applied by outsiders? In Alasdair MacIntyre's terms Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
The concept you borrow from Bouris of 'complex political victim' reminds me of the smart move Mark Duffield makes when he converts the term 'complex political emergency' into 'emergent political complexes'. Perhaps some analytic capital could be gained by thinking in terms not only of the complex political victim but also of 'victimised political complexes'. It seems that one of your underlying points is that structural and historical factors (the LRA's grievances for example) become obscured by the narrowly legal search for justice, that is to say the chance of doing politics becomes itself a victim. Perhaps the analogy to Duffield is too contrived, nevertheless your point is well made: what the Comaroffs have recently termed the 'fetishization of the law' is a trend that needs the kind of grounded critique that your analysis offers.
On methods i was struck by the curious strategy of creating a biography out of other persons' accounts. Quite an innovation, but clearly with limits. Perhaps following Danny Hoffman's take on 'splintered ethnographies' we could talk of your approach as an example of a splintered bio?
Another theme implicit in your discussion is what i have come to term the 'hierachisation of victimhood', that is the extent to which different victims are granted different status and differential access to resourses, justice etc.; victimhood is unevenly distributed and internatioanl humanitarian agencies are - despite all our good intentions - complicit in this uneven distribution. Tribunals and TRC's aswell.
And one final comment: I wonder what one might achieve by subjecting your category 'child soldier' to the same degree of critical analysis as you do the victim category. I imagine you are aware of the growing literature questioning the chronological status of the child/youth label and pointing more to its ascription as a social position...
where do i find your report?!?! i'd like to read it, but a google search didn't turn it up...
Post a Comment