Communication 431/12 – Thomas Kwoyelo v. Uganda
incompatible with human rights and IHL rules. Conditional amnesties are those
that usually offer relief from criminal conviction or criminal prosecution altogether
for defined category of actors and on meeting certain preconditions including full
disclosure of what they know about the conducts covered by the amnesty and
acknowledgement of responsibility.
289.
A number of widely ratified international human rights and humanitarian law
treaties70 explicitly require States Parties to ensure that criminal proceedings are
instituted against suspected perpetrators of prohibited acts in these instruments. It
is generally accepted that an amnesty that completely foreclosed accountability
measures for such prohibited acts would be in contravention of these instruments.
Amnesties are also deemed to be incompatible with human rights treaties like the
African Charter that do not explicitly address prosecution but which have been
understood to require State Parties to institute judicial measures when serious
violations occur unless such amnesties meet the requirements of justifiable
restrictions acceptable in human rights treaties. Amnesties that preclude
accountability measures for gross violations of human rights and serious
violations of humanitarian law, particularly for individuals with senior command
responsibility, also violate customary international law.
290.
The Inter-American human rights system has a rich jurisprudence relating to
national amnesties as a result of its historical context where a number of countries
Uganda is party to the Genocide Convention as well as the four Geneva Conventions and its
additional Protocols. It has ratified all of the core international human rights treaties, with the exception
of the International Convention on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearances, as well
as other significant treaties like the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC) on the use of Children in Armed Conflict (OPCRC-II). Uganda ratified the ICC Rome Statute in
2002 and has also supported and signed important international instruments including the Paris
Principles and Commitments of 2007 on the role of children in armed forces or groups. Uganda has also
ratified important regional treaties that impose certain human rights obligations such as the
constitutive acts of the African Union and the East African Community, the International Great Lakes
Conference Protocols and most significantly the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the
Maputo Protocol)10 and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and its
corresponding protocol.
70
78
62nd Ordinary Session, 25 April – 9 July 2018
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