“Prosecution Will Not Solve My Problems:” Women’s Senses of Justice and Reparations After Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Northern Uganda
"We situate ourselves as survivors’ advocates, but also as Acholi women with lived experiences of the war"
Time to read: 3 min
This policy brief is about justice and reparations for women who were abducted as young girls (ages 7-16 years) by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels during a 1986-2006 war with the Ugandan government and forced to serve as wives, porters, fighters, spies, and mothers in captivity for 1-15 years.
More than a decade after escaping abduction and returning home, these women are still stigmatized, rejected, live in poverty, are unemployed, and feel ignored by the government. No meaningful justice and reparations have happened, and these women’s voices remain marginal to policy debates in Uganda. The situation has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
This brief is grounded in the first author’s 5-year qualitative doctoral research, 7-months of data collection in Gulu district, and 15 years’ experiences working on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) issues in Uganda. The brief is also informed by the incredible work of the second and third authors who founded community-based organizations for survivors of SGBV and their children. We situate ourselves as survivors’ advocates, but also as Acholi women with lived experiences of the war.
Three questions guided the research: 1-Why do mothers decide to reunite, or not, with the fathers of their children born of forced marriage and sexual violence? 2-What are the circumstances under which they make these decisions? 3-What are the prevailing senses of justice and reparations for women who bore children from forced marriage?
Key findings of the research show that justice is holistic, relational, and lived in the everyday. Lived justice has 4 intersecting themes: 1-place-based justice, 2-needs-based justice, 3-relationship-based justice, and 4-compensation-based justice. These senses of justice articulated by women are driven by the cumulative impact of abduction, sexual violence and forced marriage.
The research also found that, while some women reunite with the fathers of their children due to love, rejection, children’s identities, and access to land, the majority do not, due to lack of consent, men’s perceived responsibility for wrong, hate, torture, and that the men are dead or still missing.
On May 31st and June 1st, 2021, the first author partnered with the Women’s Advocacy Network (WAN) and Watyer Ki Gen (WKG) to validate, and disseminate results of her study, and discuss actionable recommendations for policy and programs in Uganda, a collaboration funded by the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Public Scholar’s Initiative (PSI). Key issues and recommendations from this workshop are presented in the last 2 sections of this report.