An appraisal of the Kwoyelo judgment at the international crimes division in Uganda

Abstract

After being detained for 15 years, Thomas Kwoyelo was convicted and sentenced in 2024 by the International Crimes Division in Uganda. He was charged with 93 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and domestic crimes, convicted on 44 counts and sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment. His conviction and sentence came a few years after another former child soldier, Dominic Ongwen, was convicted and sentenced by the International Criminal Court (ICC). While Ongwen was the first former child soldier to appear at the ICC, Kwoyelo, who was also abducted as a child, was convicted and sentenced by a domestic court. Ongwen and Kwoyelo’s past as child soldiers was mostly disregarded during their trials. This article investigates the Kwoyelo judgment and questions why it mostly adopted a retributive rather than a restorative justice approach to the trial, especially in a country such as Uganda that has implemented several forms of restorative justice in the past. This is one of the first articles to examine the Kwoyelo judgments on conviction and sentencing and makes an important contribution to the field of the prosecution of crimes under international law by domestic courts.