Retired Ugandan bishop seeks restorative justice for former child soldiers

Macleod Baker Ochola II, 84, a retired Anglican bishop in northern Uganda, is agitating for restorative justice in a region where the wounds of a brutal war unleashed by the Lord’s Resistance Army persist.

Ochola has been responding to concerns that the modern court system may not deliver justice for the people who suffered in the complex conflict.

Led by Joseph Kony, the LRA rebels combined African mysticism and Chris­tian fundamentalism in fighting to establish a theocracy. In the 1980s and ’90s, the LRA abducted more than 60,000 children, sexually abusing them and forcing them to commit acts of violence against their own communities. By 2005, the LRA had killed more than 100,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.