Screenshot
A 2024 report by the government assurance and implementation committee, of Uganda parliament records that, there are 92,634 war debt claimants in northern and Eastern Uganda.
Out of the total claimants, the Acholi sub-region has 16, 946, while lango has 42, 024 and 33,664 claimants are in Teso. The government in its most recent communication in response to deal with war legacies has announced a commitment to pay out Uganda Shillings 5 million in cash to each house hold instead of cattle to claimants.
The minister for northern Uganda rehabilitation, Dr. Kenneth Omona informed the media recently while in Gulu city. He said the decision was taken by the cabinent of December 5th. Explaining that, this choice avoids the confusion and chaos associated to distributing actual cattle.
These moves when read in part, and whole suggest governments consistent side stepping strategy, once faced with the transitional justice matter. It is also notable that this is a continuation of the debates that haunted the parliament at the making of the transitional justice policy.
Uganda’s transitional justice policy (NTJP) was formerly approved by cabinet in 2019, nearly a decade of consultations led by the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS). The policy emerged in response to prolonged pressure from conflict-affected communities—particularly in northern and eastern Uganda— and advocacy by civil society demanding truth-telling, reparations, and accountability for abuses committed during the LRA conflict and earlier regimes.
At the time of its passage, the debates were cautious and politically constrained. Government officials framed the policy as a peace consolidation tool, not an accountability mechanism.
The emphasis was placed on reconciliation, traditional justice, and reparations, while prosecutions—especially for state actors—were quietly deprioritized. Critics warned then that the policy risked becoming symbolic: a document designed to close demands for justice without opening the state to scrutiny.
Those concerns have largely been borne out. As Uganda edges towards general elections the Country’s political debate is once again framed by history – who suffered, who liberated, and who has the moral right to govern.
Yet nearly 40 years after National Resistance Movement (NRM) took power, Uganda’s transition remains incomplete, shaped by what scholars call victors justice-accountability for the defeated, silence for the victors. Legal scholar Ruti Teitel, whose work on transitional justice is widely cited, argues that post-conflict societies often use law and history to legitimize new power.
In Uganda this meant a dominant narrative that condemns the excesses of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, while largely insulating the NRM era from comparable scrutiny. As election campaigns gather momentum, that imbalance is no longer a matter for academics alone. It is becoming a political gauntlet.
LUWERO REMEMBERED, ACHOLI, TESO, LANGO EXPLAINED AWAY
In Luwero, memorials stand where once mass graves were once hastily dug. The story told there- of civilians caught between the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), (of Obote) and the NRA in the early 80s- has become central to the NRMs’ claim to legitimacy.
“We lost every one here, my parents, my uncles’ says John Kitiyo, a survivor from Nakaseke speaking quietly”.
Luwero suffering is national history-taught in schools, invoked in speeches’ and marked by official remembrance. In Acholi, Teso and Lango the story is different. Between 1986 and the mid-2000s, northern Uganda, including parts of Teso endured one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts, while the brutality of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is undisputed, many residents say the role of the state, particularly mass displacements into camps, has never been honestly confronted.
“The say we were rescued but rescued into camps where people died every day,” recalls Akello Nyeko, a mother of five from Pader district.
“When Luwero speaks the nation listens. When the north speaks, they ask why we supported rebels.” The distinction matters. One regions pain is canonized: another is conteexualised even pathologised.
TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE THE UGANDA WAY
Uganda never held a comprehensive truth commission covering all periods of violence- from the colonial era through Amin, Obote and the NRM years. Instead, justice was retrospective, directed firmly at fallen regimes.
According to Teitel framework, this produces a “partial transition” where law is used to mark a break with the past without fully interrogating the present. The approach contrasts sharply with South Africa where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) examined abuses by both apartheid forces and liberation movements.
It also differs from Rwanda, where accountability was extensive but tightly managed with little space to discuss crimes by post genocide state.
Uganda chose a third way: Silence. “We were told peace had come, so we should move on says Okot Pius, a former camp resident in Gulu.” “But move on to where, when nobody even asked what was done to us”
ELECTIONS AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY
As political actors position themselves for 2026, references to past violence are re-imerging often selectively. NRM leaders continue to invoke the chaos of the 1970s and 1980s as a warning against change.
Opposition figures meanwhile, increasingly point to unresolved abuses after 1986 to challenge the ruling party’s authority. Political analyst Sarah Lugoose, based in Kampala, observes that history has become a champion tool.
“The state relies on a settled narrative of salvation. But younger voters especially fron the north and the east are asking questions that were previously suppressed.”
Those questions are amplified by a generation with lived memory of Amin or Obote, but direct experience of unemployment, militarized politics and restricted civic space.
LESSONS FROM ELSEWHERE
In Ethiopia, successive governments persecuted their predecessors without submitting themselves to future accountability- a circle that has contributed to recurring instability. Analysts warn Uganda risks a similar fate if it continues to defer an honest reckoning.
Teitel cautions that differed justice does not go away. It resurfaces during political transitions, often in disturbing ways. Uganda’s long transition, frozen in the legitimacy of single liberation moment, may now be reaching its tail end.
In what is clearly an unfinished conversation, calls for a national truth-telling process covering all regimes and regions have grown louder in recent years, though they have remained politically sensitive. For survivors like Akello, the demand is simple.
“We do not want revenge,” she said. “We want the Country to admit that our lives mattered too.” As Uganda faces 2026, the central issue is no longer whether the past will matter in the elections- but which past, and whose truth, will be allowed to shape the future.
About the Author
