Browsing by Author "Ojok, Boniface"

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    ‘The Cooling of Hearts’: Community Truth-Telling in Northern Uganda
    (Human Rights Review, 2012) Anyeko, Ketty; Baines, Erin; Komakech, Emon; Ojok, Boniface; Ogora, Lino Owor; Victor, Letha
    Recent national and international debates on truth and reconciliation in Uganda have emphasized the importance of incorporating local-level mechanisms into a national transitional justice strategy. The Juba Peace Talks represented an opportunity to develop and articulate sufficient and just alternatives and complementary mechanisms to the international criminal model. The most commonly debated mechanism is the Acholi process known as mato oput (drinking the bitter root), a restorative justice approach to murder. Drawing on 2 months of research in nine internally displaced persons’ camps in 2007, we examine local justice practices in the region of northern Uganda to consider their potential, promise and pitfalls to realizing a successful truth-telling process. We find that although local mechanisms could help facilitate reconciliation in the region, truth-telling is but one part of a conciliatory process complicated by a national context of fear and the complexity of the victim–perpetrator identity at the community level. These locally informed insights help move forward the debate on such mechanisms in Uganda and add useful insights into community processes in the field of transitional justice more generally.
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    Policy recommendations for addressing the rights of the missing and their families in northern Uganda
    (Justice and Reconciliation Project, 2014) Jessee, Erin; Opinia, Sylvia; Alexander, Katherine; Ojok, Boniface; Nyeko, Oryem
    It is difficult to determine how many civilians were abducted or separated from their families and went missing as a result of the 1986-2006 conflict in northern Uganda between the infamous rebel force, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and the armed forces of the Government of Uganda, the National Resistance Army (NRA). The LRA relied on a strategy of abducting children for use as child soldiers in order to maintain their military strength and terrorise the civilian population, while the NRA is accused of various forms of brutality including such acts as abduction, forceful recruitment, rape, torture and child soldiering during the earlier years of the war.2 Reports estimate that 24,000 to 38,000 children have been abducted and forcibly recruited as child soldiers by the LRA alone across northern Uganda.3 By 2007, 22,759 children and adults had registered through the reception centres in the region as returned abductees.4 The fates of the remaining thousands of abductees, both children and adults, are unknown.