In the case of Acholi-land, there were claims of socio-economic inequality as the reason for the war, but also outcry for compensation for livestock resources lost during the war. But amid all this, there was no policy on reparations or transitional justice. Thus, even after the government committed itself to pay for reparations in the Accountability and Reconciliation Agreement of 2007 and the Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) component in 2008 during the peace talks in Juba, there was no policy or legal framework to operationalise it.
Conventionally, reparations refer to redress given to victims of serious or gross human rights violations or abuses. They are treated as an integral part of the transitional justice mechanism following a violent conflict either at inter-state or intra-state level. Literature on the subject indicates that reparations paid out to individuals or communities for violations of their rights are guaranteed by international principles on human rights and international humanitarian law (Schwager 2005; van Boven 2009; Zegveld 2003) although politics ultimately determines the final action (Moffett 2017). In this article we shall only focus on the stolen animal resources. Hence, we shall pursue the right of the citizens whose animals were taken or stolen during the war to claim for reparations. The data obtained from the field indicates that while some of the animals were taken by rebels or government troops with a promise to compensate them after the war, a significant portion of the livestock was simply stolen by men in uniform or rustled by people who were assumed to be from Karamoja.
Transitional justice refers to the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large-scale or systematic human rights violations that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response to (TRAC FM/ WIPC July 2020). It consists of processes and mechanisms aimed at three types of justice: retributive, restorative, and distributive as a means of reconciliation in the context of post-conflict reconstruction (Kasapas 2020). The five forms of reparations – restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition (van Boven 2009; Zegveld 2003) – can all be mapped along the three types of justice.
Within international law, reparations are part of the responsibilities of those who have violated the rights of others in a conflict or war. Both Schwager (2005) and Magarrell (2007) stress that under international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and domestic laws of individual countries, the individual is a bearer of rights (rights holder); hence, if his/her rights are infringed upon during an armed conflict, he/she is entitled to get compensation for the loss resulting from the violation. However, individual countries have been ‘reluctant to entitle, explicitly and in general, victims of violations … to claim reparations’ (Zegveld 2003: 497). The challenge, Zigveld opines, is that humanitarian law treaties ‘do not expressly envisage causes of action for victims in national or international law, so victims are hardly able to exercise their rights’ (ibid. 497). They use the technicality as an excuse to deny victims their rights; and, as already observed, this is further compounded by the absence of a permanent enforcement mechanism at the international level (Terzieva 2019; Zigveld 2003).
In the case of Uganda, the country did not have a transitional justice policy until 2019 (TRAC FM/ WIPC July 2020). Hence, in spite of the fact that the government had committed itself under the Juba peace agreements in 2007 and 2008 to pay reparations, it had no enabling policy or law to fulfil this. It was only when the Association sued the government that the president finally responded to their letter by instructing the Attorney General to negotiate an out of court settlement.