"In the interests of justice?" The International Criminal Court, peace talks and the failed quest for war crimes accountability in northern Uganda

This article analyzes the first peace talks to take place against the backdrop of an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation: the Juba Talks between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda (2006–2008). Drawing on field research and original source material, it departs from well-worn peace versus justice debates and provides new empirical material to explore how the presence of the court shaped domestic political dynamics at Juba. It argues that at the level of broad rhetoric, the presence of the court created significant discord between negotiating parties. On a practical level, however, it created space for consensus, but not the type envisaged by international justice promoters. The court came to be seen by both sides as an intervention that needed to be contained and controlled. This resulted in the politically expedient Agreement on Accountability and Reconciliation, which showcased a transitional justice “tool-kit,” but was based on a shared desire to evade the jurisdiction of international criminal justice. Given its practical complexity, the transitional justice agreement was ultimately rejected by Joseph Kony, who became increasingly distrustful of his own negotiating team at Juba. In findings relevant to other contexts, the article presents in-depth analyses of how domestic political dynamics around the ICC intervention produced a national transitional justice framework designed to protect both parties from war crimes accountability

Transitional Justice and Violent Extremism

This publication is part of a project that aims to fill a major gap in policy making: the failure to integrate lessons learnt and best practices from the field of transitional justice in relation to conflict resolution strategies with two kinds of unconventional armed actors: 1) “violent extremist” groups, such as jihadists; and 2) organised crime groups, such as mafia, gang networks and drug cartels. IFIT’s work on the former began in 2017 with the UN University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR). The project was concerned with the fact that, to date, what has reigned is an overwhelmingly punitive and dragnet approach which, rather than helping address root causes and break cycles of resentment and violence, instead risks renewing or reinforcing them. This resulted in three jointly-published case studies (ISIS in Iraq, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria) and an initial policy framework. Building on this initial work, IFIT launched a second phase of research in 2019 on the same broad topic, drawing on lessons from a wider range of country situations where comparable challenges have been grappled with, in order to provide expanded guidance for policymakers. This involved fieldwork-based reports covering Libya (focused on the LIFG), Uganda (focused on the LRA), and Afghanistan (focused on the Taliban), all of which examine the intersection of negotiation and transitional justice goals. IFIT commissioned additional taxonomy research to plot identifiable similarities and differences of motivation, structure, and context along a wide spectrum of different archetypes of non-state or unconventional armed groups. All of this informed a final framework that aims to help policymakers tailor more effective negotiation and transitional justice strategies to address root causes, break cycles of violence, and strengthen the rule of law in settings affected by violent extremism