Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court: A feminist analysis on international crimes and complex subjectivities in war

Abstract

In February 2021, the International Criminal Court convicted Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier and later commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), on 61 counts amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes committed between 2002 and 2005 in Northern Uganda. In this article, I reflect on the crimes attributed to Ongwen by the Court and on his status as a victim-perpetrator. I thus scrutinize what is said and silenced in the judgment from a gender and feminist perspective. I will defend the thesis that the case opens a new reflection opportunity on the paradoxes of the punitive drive of the international feminist struggle, and on the difficulty of overcoming radical binaries within the realm of international criminal law.