APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 66 66 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL have become internally displaced due to a war waged by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) against the Ugandan government. The LRA, under the leadership of Joseph Kony, has committed atrocities and torture in the name of religion. At first, Kony acted to protect the Acholi, but after being denied the blessing of Acholi elders, turned against them.23 In 2003, after several attempts to deal with the rebels internally, the Ugandan government decided to seek the help of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued arrest warrants for five rebel leaders, including Kony.24 In response to the ICC indictments, the LRA offered to negotiate with the government for a peaceful end to the conflict in exchange for rescinding the ICC warrants. Its proposal produced a mixed response in Uganda, with various elders and traditional leaders believing that an internal solution would be the more peaceful and appropriate avenue. Due to the complexity of the war, and difficulty distinguishing between perpetrators and victims, reconciliation and amnesty appeared to be the favored approaches.25 Furthermore the rather fragile relationship between the north and the government had undermined any trust local leaders might have had in the state regime.26 There was also mistrust toward the ICC and questioning of its objectivity, primarily due to its not issuing warrants for government forces.27 Other objections to the ICC, similar to ones raised in the Rwandan case, involved the lack of community involvement and dissonance in the type of punishment acceptable in Uganda and by the international community. In northern Uganda, accepted methods of punishment include shame, mockery, jeering, social rejection, and some form of compensation.28 This differs starkly from the ICC’s typical sentence of life imprisonment. Traditional Acholi conflict resolution practices, such as mato oput (to drink a bitter potion), flow from Acholis’ understanding of life. Mato oput, based on remorse and the readiness to accept responsibility for one’s actions, does not involve courts of law. The traditional rituals of the process are usually carried out after mediation overseen by elders and an expression of remorse by the perpetrator. The mediator, usually a leader from an uninvolved clan, remains impartial and coordinates any arrangements made for the payment of blood money, which is the customary reparation after a killing occurs.29 Following mediation and statement of remorse, a cleansing ritual to rid the killer of vengeful spirits is performed and by extension to cleanse his or her entire community. Another part of the traditional mechanism, which gives the process its name, involves the whole community drinking a concoction of bitter herbs from the same calabash.30 It begins with the killer and the next of kin of the victim drinking 23. Joseph Wasonga, ‘Rediscovering mato oput: The Acholi justice system and the conflict in northern Uganda’, Africa Peace and Conflict Journal, 2:1 (2009), 27–38. 24. IRIN, ‘Uganda: Balancing forgiveness with justice’, 6 September 2006, www.irinnews.org/report .aspx?reportid=60819. 25. Barney Afako, ‘Reconciliation and justice: ‘Mato oput’ and the Amnesty Act’, Conciliation Resources, 2002, www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/northern-uganda/reconciliation-justice.php. 26. James Ojera Latigo, ‘Northern Uganda: Tradition-based practices in the Acholi region’ in Huyse and Salter, Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict. 27. Wasonga, ‘Rediscovering mato oput’, 27–38. 28. Ibid. 29. Latigo, ‘Northern Uganda’. 30. A calabash is a squash-like vegetable used as a vessel (but can also be consumed).