Insight with Tim Allen October 24, 2006

The LSE's Tim Allen talks to Anthony Borden about Uganda’s brutal civil war, the first indictments of members of Joseph Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the prospects for a comprehensive peace agreement.

Over 1.5 million people in northern Uganda live in displacement camps in appalling conditions. They are kept there, ostensibly for their own protection, by the Ugandan Army who are fighting the brutal Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Led by Joseph Kony, the LRA has abducted thousands of children and has systematically tortured, raped, maimed and killed. At the end of 2005 the newly created International Criminal Court issued its first indictments against Kony and other senior LRA commanders.

Kony is seeking to quash the indictments as a precondition for peace. Some traditional leaders, religious groups and NGOs see the indictments as an obstacle to a settlement while the Ugandan government and ICC insist they stand. Meanwhile the struggling peace talks between the LRA and the government of Uganda are stalling.

Join us as we discuss the conflict, the prospects for peace and the first major case against the LRA in the International Criminal Court.

Tim Allen is a Reader in Development Studies at the London School of Economics and the author of Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army.

Anthony Borden is the Chief Executive of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting.

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