The World Legal Court docket (ICC) has lately ordered reparations for sufferers of Dominic Ongwen, an ex-child soldier became commander within the Lord’s Resistance Military, a revolt team that terrorised northern Uganda for 20 years.

The courtroom’s order, the primary within the Ugandan situation, awards collective community-based symbolic cost for every sufferer. World legal regulation students Tonny Raymond Kirabira and Miracle Chinwenmeri Uche resolution questions in regards to the ruling.

Who’re the sufferers on this case?

The sufferers are a part of the post-war affected communities in northern Uganda. Ongwen is likely one of the best Lord’s Resistance Military commanders charged by means of the World Legal Court docket for struggle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity dedicated between 2002 and 2005. The fees come with assaults in opposition to the civilian inhabitants, homicide, enslavement in addition to sexual and gender-based violence.

Different fees come with conscripting kids beneath the age of 15 into an armed team and the use of them to take part actively in hostilities.

Ongwen used to be convicted of the crimes in 2021, and is these days serving a joint sentence of 25 years of imprisonment in Norway after his unsuccessful enchantment in The Hague. When an individual is convicted of multiple crime, the World Legal Court docket broadcasts a sentence for every crime in addition to a joint sentence specifying the overall duration of imprisonment.

Necessarily, now not all sufferers of the Lord’s Resistance Military struggle will obtain reparations. This order applies handiest to these harmed in explicit techniques by means of Ongwen, at once or not directly. Ongwen’s sufferers recognised by means of the courtroom incorporated the ones within the internally displaced folks’s camps and sufferers of sexual and gender-based crimes. Others are kids born of the ones crimes, and previous little one squaddies.

Ongwen’s legal responsibility for reparations used to be set at €52,429,000 (US$57 million) for about 49,772 attainable sufferers. However as he used to be already declared as indigent, the reparations will probably be made throughout the Trust Fund for Victims. It is a separate organisation from the courtroom. It’s mandated with implementation of the World Legal Court docket’s reparations and help programmes.

What does global regulation say about reparations on this context?

Usually, the duty to fix hurt beneath one of these context arises from particular person legal accountability of the individual discovered to be criminally accountable for crimes. They’re additionally similarly chargeable for the reparations. However the global regulation has a suite of non-legally binding basic principles and guidelines at the proper to a treatment and reparation for sufferers of gross violation of global human rights regulation and critical violations of global humanitarian regulation. States could also be accountable for reparations in contexts like that of the Lord’s Resistance Military struggle in northern Uganda.

The prison predicament is that Uganda’s legal justice device, like the ones of many nations within the creating international, does now not have an outlined sufferers’ programme or mechanism for reparations. If so, the opposite is to take a look at the prevailing transitional justice frameworks or insurance policies to attract pathways for reparations.

Is there a precedent for the ICC’s reparation order?

The main steering on reparations is derived from Article 75 of the Rome Statute. The item permits the courtroom to make orders for the good thing about sufferers, together with reimbursement and rehabilitation. The reparations order may also be made at once in opposition to a convicted individual, on this case Ongwen, detailing the character and scale of reparations he must make. The courtroom can similarly order the award throughout the consider fund.

This isn’t the primary reparations order by means of the World Legal Court docket. There have been orders within the circumstances of Congolese revolt leaders Thomas Lubanga, Germain Katanga and Bosco Ntaganda. The courtroom additionally issued a reparations order in terms of Malian Islamist Ahmad Al Mahdi. Those circumstances incorporated collective reparations with individualised elements. The Al Mahdi reparations procedure incorporated all the inhabitants of Timbuktu as eligible sufferers.

Within the Ongwen case, the courtroom used the rules of reparations set out within the Ntaganda case. However the courtroom expanded the scope of sufferers in addition to the kinds and modalities of reparations. Extra notable are the rules on the subject of the remedy of kid sufferers; gender inclusivity and sensitivity; and sexual and gender-based violence.

What occurs subsequent?

There are two stages to the courtroom’s follow: the judicial and administrative levels of reparations. The courtroom problems an order beneath the judicial court cases. However it works thru different administrative channels within the registry, the prison representatives of sufferers and the Accept as true with Fund for Sufferers on the subject of the execution, implementation and enforcement of the reparations orders. As Ongwen’s case comes to particular person and collective reparations, the courtroom will observe and oversee the implementation of the order.

Following this reparations order, we must be expecting to look some other core judicial determination of approving a draft implementation plan submitted by means of the consider fund. And due to this fact there will probably be a attention of the consider fund’s periodic experiences.

Whilst handiest 4,096 sufferers had been authorized to take part within the courtroom court cases, the judges envisage that there will probably be about 49,772 attainable beneficiaries of the reparations.

The courtroom can be anticipated to check selections by means of the consider fund all through the executive screening, as a part of its oversight position all through the implementation degree. The consider fund will perform consultations with sufferers for the needs of designing and imposing the reparations awards. This and the method and result of fundraising imply that the entire implementation of the reparations will take years.

Uganda because the involved state celebration is obligated beneath global regulation to enhance the enforcement of the reparation orders. So Uganda’s executive could be anticipated to move out and to find individuals who fall beneath the courtroom’s order.

However the executive is hesitant to unmarried out people as direct sufferers. The Lord’s Resistance Military struggle affected all the northern Uganda and a part of the rustic’s jap area. The to be had pathway for the federal government’s formal engagement with Ongwen’s sufferers will probably be throughout the National Transitional Justice Policy of 2019, which has provision for sufferers’ reparations and different enhance.