Country Case Studies Uganda remains a product of historical accident, where different nations and peoples have been forced to co-exist within the borders of one state, under one master, one flag, one national anthem and one currency without their consent. The country adopted a name that has no meaning to Uganda’s historical legacy and heritage – deriving from the Berlin Conference and the scramble for and partition of Africa in the 1880s. Ethnic conflicts have remained embedded in the unresolved national questions. There remains no clear model for statehood. Should it take the form of the nation-state approach or the oriental model of ‘civilizing the state’, as the Chinese might contend? Uganda has been a country at war since independence in 1962, with northern Uganda bearing the greatest brunt and the longest period of insurgency. My foolish perception and perspective! What we often characterize as ethnic conflicts are actually unresolved national questions, superimposed on even more complex economic, agrarian and factory questions. As Ugandans, Kenyans, Rwandans, Burundians, Congolese, Nigerian and Sierra Leoneans, we have never decided whether we want to live together as one and, if we do, on what terms? Until we seriously address the national question with its regional, continental and international dimensions, no amount of transitional justice will deal with the sense of dissatisfaction that the imposed nation-state generates in Africa today. In doing this, we must think globally while acting locally. Our local is our traditions, values and belief systems that were uprooted during the introduction of common law in Uganda. Uganda’s transitional justice challenges and prospects Uganda’s attempts at a transitional justice process have never been conventional ones. Most transitional justice theory contemplates an examination of past wrongs going hand-in-hand with political transformation. Yet in the Ugandan context, all such prior attempts were initiated by the regimes in power and were not accompanied by wide-ranging systemic reforms in governance. Idi Amin initiated the first attempt in 1974, and then from 1987 it was through the human rights commission under the National Resistance Movement. These never provided reports with recommendations for action. In Uganda, the transitional justice process is contemplated and initiated in an extremely complex political context, without corresponding regime change and in the presence of a precedent-setting amnesty for all armed groups who renounce rebellion, including perpetrators of international crimes. 56 International Conference on Transitional Justice, Zimbabwe