Accepted Panels

The concept of resilience has been used in diverse ways to describe the behaviour of people affected by war in northern Uganda. It has been used to refer to a simple capacity to survive and to endure; to a drawing together of a community through the punishment or scapegoating of individuals; to self-help activities; and to the ability of some people to withstand shocks or traumatic events. These usages of the resilience concept echo meanings of words in the Acholi language, although those words may have other connotations too. This paper explores the resilience behaviours of women who were forcibly recruited for sexual and reproductive purposes by the Lord’s Resistance Army, and who chose to testify for the prosecution or defence at the trial of Dominic Ongwen in The Hague. Those who testified for the latter, despite the violence perpetrated upon them, seem to have expressed a more personally beneficial approach to resilience than those seeking retribution or compensation. In many ways this reflects the prevalent ways in which victims of rape in the region are reconciled and required to live with their rapists to promote what has been described as ‘social harmony’. Far from empowering abused women, measures to implement justice on their behalf is co-opted to reinforce gendered norms, and formalised judicial systems are complicit in that process. At least in part, that is due to sensitivities about colonial legacies, and demands to work in complementary and culturally sensitive ways.