Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

Modem conflicts are increasingly intra-state struggles, rather than clearly delineated international conflicts. Even when violence spills over borders, guerrilla and terror tactics predominate. Civilians frequently bear the brunt of the fighting, as direct victims of atrocities or indirect victims of displacement and deprivation. Insurgencies often use hit and run tactics and attacks against civilians to undermine the dominant power rather than attempt to hold substantial territory. As a result, a military solution to conflict is less likely. It is probable that many current armed conflicts will end not with unconditional surrender, but with peace deals containing compromises over accountability, despite the international community's rejection of impunity in principle. Thus, international criminals gain a seat at the negotiating table rather than in the dock of a criminal court, whether domestic or international. Although it seems that the immediate need for peace will often outweigh calls for justice, the International Criminal Court can further both goals in certain circumstances.

The long-running conflict in Uganda illustrates the problem and potential solution. A vicious rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), has been terrorizing civilians in Uganda for decades. Its favorite tactics include abducting children and turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into drug-addled child soldiers. Abductees are forced to mutilate, maim, rape, and kill under penalty of death. Millions of families have been displaced into overcrowded, squalid camps where they are still vulnerable to attacks because of insufficient protection by the government, whose forces are also accused of rapes and killings of civilians. The LRA claims that it is now willing to put down its arms and end the atrocities. But its price for signing a peace deal includes immunity from the charges made against its leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC).2 As the Prosecutor of the ICC points out in the above quote, such demands amount to blackmail and extortion. Yet, can the international community justifiably reject trading peace for impunity, thereby leaving the people of Northern Uganda subject to LRA atrocities?

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