INTRODUCTION

Women and girls continue to suffer from the predicaments associated with violent conflicts in which they are victims of rape, sex-slavery, forced marriage or prostitution and abductions. These acts are usually committed as part of systematic war strategies or are occasioned by vulnerability of women during war times. During war periods, women bear heavy responsibility of sustaining their households as they fill the gaps left by men who may have joined the warring groups, or may have been killed or may have escaped. Thus women assume the responsibility of being the heads of their households. Yet the place of women remains peripheral in transitional justice initiatives which are geared towards bringing about sustainable peace in post-war societies. The situation of northern Uganda where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) committed serious civilian atrocities against the dominantly Acholi population of northern Uganda for over twenty years is one of those situations where transitional justice initiatives have not adequately placed women at the centre.

In 2003 the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, referred the situation in the International Criminal Court (ICC). This referral generated debates regarding the appropriateness of the court vis-à-vis local peace and justice initiatives that were being proposed. Traditional leaders, civil society organisations, religious leaders and a section of the population rejected the ICC's pursuit of retributive justice for the LRA commanders as being an obstacle to peace. Instead they advocated forgiveness and reconciliation as a more viable route to peace. Central to the debates were the criteria of justice that would appropriately bring lasting peace and stability to the region. This discourse was placed within the framework of punitive versus restorative justice. But neither side of the debate critically placed women at the centre, yet women have born the greatest suffering during the conflict. This chapter therefore seeks to identify this lacuna by examining the place of women in the transitional justice processes in northern Uganda by asking whether the approaches to transitional justice in northern Uganda were broad enough to cover various forms of dehumanisation like rape, suffered by women during the conflict. In this chapter, I argue that taking cognisance of conditions of women and their needs in transitional justice processes is a key to creating sustainable peace and stability in northern Uganda as elsewhere.