INTRODUCTION

I will begin by quoting from Katharine A. Marshall's Article entitled ‘Prevention and Complementarity in the International Criminal Court: A Positive Approach’ in which she stated that:

Uganda has had its share of wars, and its internal conflict has lasted for over twenty years, closer to three decades. The consequences of the conflict have been far-reaching and include destabilisation of the region, the displacement of up to 1.8 million people, the killing and mutilation of tens of thousands of civilians, and the abduction of even more, mainly children, for recruitment in the LRA forces. The prosecution of these alleged crimes committed in Uganda is long overdue. Uganda has endeavoured – by way of negotiations, treaties, enacting legislation, working with international courts and creating courts – a myriad of ways to resolve, adjudicate, reconcile and evolve from this conflict. Uganda is finally at a point in its history where there are strengthened national courts to deal with adjudicating alleged perpetrators of international crimes. With related but separate cases ongoing at the ICC, Uganda and also the international community are finally at a new point in history in international criminal law. This is at a time when complementarity is the main principle in which its premises, boundaries, definitions, failures and successes are yet to be determined but which will soon be tested.

From the beginning, the idea of complementarity was intended to balance the competing interests of a court with universal jurisdiction and the principle of state sovereignty. The concept of complementarity began not with the Rome Statute but, rather, in 1937 with the League of Nations Draft Convention for an international criminal court.