Sulayman Babiiha Mpisi
Department of Development Studies, Gulu University, Uganda
Abstract
The Acholi War Debt Claimants Association, the people’s initiative to claim for war reparations in northern Uganda, was formed in 2005 before the final peace talks that took place in Juba, South Sudan. The state did not have a transitional justice policy until 2019. Thus, the Association became the primary voice for Acholi claimants who lost their livestock in the 20-year insurrection. Primary data on the Association was assembled in 2011, 2016 and 2022, enabling me to follow its trajectory over a decade. In this article, I show why cattle and goats were such important resources for Acholi people, and how the Association – a non-state agency – worked to process claims for their replacement. To the extent that these claims were met, compensation was given in (invisible) money rather than (tangible) livestock, which engendered opacity, suspicion and conflicts between the Association and government, and within the Association itself, leading to new conflicts.
Keywords: War reparations, Acholi War Debt Claimants Association, livestock compensation, transitional justice, northern Uganda
Introduction
The Acholi people’s demand for compensation for their resources lost in the twenty-year war started way back in the early 1990s, long before the Joseph Kony insurgency came to an end. But to date, almost thirty years later, the matter is yet to be concluded. The protracted insurgency which started in 1987 (Gesseldorf et al. 2012, Gersony 1997) devastated the livestock resource base of the Acholi people so badly that it deprived the majority of the population of their life-long savings – their cows. The Acholi kept livestock (cows, goats, sheep, and chickens) as a form of storage for their wealth although they were not traditionally among the cattle-keeper communities in Uganda. Taking away their cows therefore left them with no fallback position. This not only made them poorer but also worsened the economic disparity which already existed between Acholi-land (and the north in general) and the rest of Uganda (GoU 2007). That might explain why the international development agencies which played a big role in the peace talks in Juba, South Sudan, between the rebels and the government of Uganda, advocated for the people to be compensated for violations of their rights (Amnesty International 2008). Hence, the agreements signed in Juba between 2006 and 2008, specifically mentioned that government was to pay reparations. However, the agreements were marked by ‘significant flaws and fell short of ensuring prompt and effective reparations for the victims’ (Amnesty International 2008:5). Additionally, the government of Uganda lacked a transitional justice policy; hence, there was no concrete plan or mechanism for implementing the provisions on reparations. It should be noted here that Acholi War Debt Claimants Association (AWDCA), hereafter referred to as the Association, was formed in 2005, much earlier than the peace talks or the agreements. By the time the peace agreements obliged the government to pay for reparations regardless of whether the violations had been committed by the rebels or government forces, the Association’s claims system to demand for restitutive justice was already in place.