Complex political perpetrators: reflections on Dominic Ongwen

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Periodical article

Title:	Complex political perpetrators: reflections on Dominic Ongwen
Author:	Baines, Erin K.
Year:	2009
Periodical:	Journal of Modern African Studies
Volume:	47
Issue:	2
Pages:	163-191
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	child soldiers rebellions
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/30224939
Abstract:	Dominic Ongwen is an indicted war criminal and former child soldier in one of the world's most brutal rebel organizations, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. Ongwen is at once victim and perpetrator: what justice strategy is relevant? The author introduces the concept of complex political perpetrators to describe youth who occupy extremely marginal spaces in settings of chronic crisis, and who use violence as an expression of political agency. Ongwen represents a troupe of young rebels who were 'bred' in the shadows of illiberal war economies. Excluded from the polity, or rather never having been socialized within it, such complex political perpetrators must be recognized in the debate on transitional justice after mass atrocity, lest cycles of exclusion and violence as politics by another means continue. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]