Symposium on the ICC’s Ongwen case
The co-editors, Dr Rosemary Grey and Dr Luke Moffett, together with the Journal of International Criminal Justice, invite submissions for a forthcoming symposium about the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) case concerning former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander Dominic Ongwen, to be published in June 2024.For many reasons, the Ongwen case is a particularly important case for analysis and reflection. It spanned virtually the whole of the ICC’s history, raised numerous novel legal and evidentiary issues, is currently the only case from the situation in Uganda to have proceeded to trial, and included the widest range of charges of any ICC case to date.
Background
The case commenced in 2005 when Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo applied for arrest warrants concerning the LRA’s alleged leader Joseph Kony and four other LRA members, one of whom was Mr Ongwen.[1] It was severed from the Kony et al. case in 2015 following Mr Ongwen’s voluntary appearance at the ICC,[2] with the charges confirmed in 2016, during Prosecutor Bensouda’s term.[3] The trial judgment was delivered in 2021,[4] with the conviction and sentence upheld on appeal in 2022, during Prosecutor Khan’s term.[5]Points of interest in this long-running case included: the defenses of duress and mental disease or defect; the legality and morality of prosecuting a former child soldier; the definitions of certain sexual and reproductive crimes; the use of pre-recorded video testimony; the challenges of interpretation and translation into a language of lesser diffusion (LLD); the experience of outreach to the affected communities in Uganda; and the compatibility of certain spiritual and secular worldviews, among many others.The symposium aims to consider all of these issues and more, from a wide range of theoretical, doctrinal, empirical, socio-legal, and/or practical perspectives. To encourage and enable participation from a diverse range of authors, including authors with lived experience of the Uganda conflict, the symposium will include submissions of different formats including:
- Original research articles ranging from 8,000 to 10,000 words;
- Original reflection pieces ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 words;
- Original edited transcripts of dialogues between contributors ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 words;
- Up to three artistic contributions such as original poems or original visual art works.
- Please note: all word counts include abstract, headings, and footnotes.
Submission details
The deadline for submissions is Sunday 1 October 2023. Submissions should be made online: please visit this page after reading the instructions for authors available on the Journal’s web pages. The co-editors will evaluate submissions on the basis of merit (originality of contribution, depth of research, strength of argument and clarity of expression), taking into account the aim of including a diversity of topics and perspectives. The co-editors will then decide which artistic contributions to include, and send out the other selected submissions to double-blind peer review. They hope to inform authors whether or not their submission has been selected for peer review by the end of December 2024.It is anticipated that peer reviews will be completed by the end of February 2024, with any author revisions returned by the end of April 2024, and the symposium available for publication by the end of June 2024.Depending on the number and quality of submissions, the Journal’s Editorial Board reserves the choice to publish the symposium as a special issue of the Journal.For questions and further information, please contact co-editors Rosemary Grey ([email protected]) and Luke Moffett ([email protected]) or the Journal’s executive editor, Urmila Dé ([email protected]).
