Publications by Year: 2007

Ravaged by 21 years of war and destruction, Northern Uganda faces serious obstacles in achieving reconciliation and accountability for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. While security in the region has improved since the migration of the Lord’s Resistance Army to the Congo, Ugandans continue to struggle with the aftereffects of an era of violence. This study relays Ugandans’ views on peace, mechanisms for justice, and reintegration, and consequently recommends that the Ugandan government and international community act in concert to develop a strategy for peace-building, justice, socioeconomic development, and poverty reduction in the North.

The rising importance of non-state armed groups is heightened by three post-Cold War phenomena: the increased fragmentation of states into smaller self-governing entities, the augmented privatization of warfare, and, by virtue of the expansion of global communication networks, the inflated accountability of states towards non-state actors. This context has influenced significantly the emergence of modern transnational and non-state armed groups (NSAGs) — i.e., groups that use force, flow across state boundaries, utilize global communication and transportation networks, seek international influence, and increasingly undertake military operations against dominant states. The key markers of how contemporary conflict between states and NSAGs varies from classical state-based warfare are to be found primarily in tactical and strategic differences. The increased (quantitative) participation of NSAGs in conflict presents in and of itself a strategic challenge for states. Since the events of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath, Al Qaeda and its associated groups, for example, have decentralized and diversified their activities significantly. Almost systematically, NSAGs have proven through their military aptitude that they can innovate faster than states. It, thus, became a strategic test for states to transform and adapt their intelligence and war-fighting capabilities to face these new contests and such mutation. From the tactical perspective, one of the most important developments is the increasingly unconventional and irregular means and methods used by transnational NSAGs. This is also one of the areas that conventional military forces have struggled to respond to. It is important in this changed context to differentiate between non-state armed groups, acknowledge their complexity and broadened goals, and register the implications of such development for states (which are themselves just as variegated as NSAGS). The ability of an NSAG such as Hezbollah to rely on local support, or at least tolerance, is another important modern-day advantage of armed groups that render conventional military tactics much less effective, if not obsolete in some cases. Such evolution underscores the fact that many an NSAG — whether as sophisticated as Hezbollah or more fluidly organized — is well suited to engaging in protracted conflicts in which no decisive military victory is required. 

This policy brief reviews the legal questions associated with the participation of civilians in hostilities. This issue represents a critical challenge to the protection of civilians in current conflicts, particularly when hostilities are conducted in the midst of civilian populations and assets, and when non-state armed groups are engaged as central actors. This issue is also of particular relevance when the hostilities occur under occupation. While international law recognizes a basic right of selfdetermination for populations under occupation, it provides immunity against violence only to those not participating in hostilities. This apparent contradiction is at the core of the debate on the protection of civilians and raises a number of questions about the roles and rights of civilians in armed conflict, as well as the concept of participation in the war effort and the nature of hostilities. Is a member of a militant group necessarily a “combatant”? Can he or she be targeted according to the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL)? Is membership the key criterion, or are the actual acts of the individual the deciding factors of his or her status under the law? How can a civilian maintain or restore his or her protected status? Practitioners face these and related questions when developing policies for civilian protection in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). As with all briefs in this series, this paper focuses on providing practitioners with a clear understanding of the legal framework available for protecting Palestinian civilians living in the OPT, as well as the legal regime applicable to both the Israeli military and Palestinian militants when they engage in military operations. This framework is based on IHL (and, in a broader sense, on international human rights law). This note explores the spectrum of opinion (amongst both scholars and practitioners) on the question of the legal implications of civilian participation in hostilities, in particular the legality of targeting civilians who engage in hostilities. It highlights debates ongoing in the field of IHL without attempting to present “correct” answers, with an eye to enhancing practitioners’ understanding of the types of legal rationale used both to limit and allow targeting of civilians who engage in hostilities. Ultimately, the aim of this brief is to strengthen the capacity of professionals to utilize and negotiate with the law while developing strategies to enhance the protection of civilians.

Since the late 1980s, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a spiritualist rebel group with no clear political agenda, has abducted tens of thousands of children and adults to serve as porters and soldiers. In the early 1990s, children who escaped from the LRA or were captured by Ugandan soldiers were often paraded in the streets in the hope that someone would identify them. This treatment prompted a group of parents of abducted children to establish the Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO), a reception center in Gulu, in 1994. In December 2005, the Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations launched The Database Project to better document abduction and help improve the capacity of 8 reception centers in the northern districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, Apac, and Lira to collect and analyze information about former LRA abductees.

This paper examines the relationship between the legal framework of international humanitarian law (IHL) and civil society actors operating in conflict situations. Attention is paid to assessing the manner in which the latter can play a role in strengthening the humanitarian dimension of the former. Brief introductory comments are warranted so as to situate the debate, in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in a conflict zone are adopted as the primary unit of analysis. IHL is the field of public international law which regulates the conduct of hostilities, namely restricting the means and methods of warfare available to parties to the conflict, and laying out protections afforded civilians and those no longer taking part in hostilities (hors de combat). State-centric in its development, the central tenets of IHL are found in the Hague Regulations of 1907, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the two Protocols Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977. It is the right of sovereign states to decide which treaty-based international legal obligations they adopt regarding the legal regulation of the conduct of armed conflicts, however a number of legal provisions of IHL have attained the status of customary international law, and are thus binding on all parties to the conflict. This raises questions in regards to the status of non-state actors under international humanitarian law. The legal position of such actors, which for the purpose of this paper will focus on international organizations and non-governmental organizations, warrants close examination. 

This briefing note aims to assess the interplay between International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), particularly as international agencies are engaged in the protection of Palestinian civilians living under occupation. In so doing, the paper will present a range of legal arguments on the applicability of IHRL considering the current situation in the OPT.

In light of human rights violations in Northern Uganda, this research note presents preliminary data on Ugandans’ attitudes on peace and justice. The findings reflect the respondents’ desires for truth reconciliation as well as their desires to hold perpetuators of violence accountable for their actions. However, the findings show that justice is not a top priority for Ugandans in comparison to more tangible needs for health, peace, money, and education. A majority of Ugandans in the North are open to the reintegration of former LRA members in society, albeit conditionally on diminished social and political rights for past LRA leaders.