When the International Criminal Court announced in January 2004 that its landmark first investigation would be into the brutal war in Northern Uganda, the statement was met with widespread and passionate condemnation from within the East African country. For perhaps the first time in the history of international law, however, those opposing the enforcement of humanitarian and human rights law were not self-interested government officials or rebel leaders. Instead, the protests came from the Ugandan human rights community itself, from activists, lawyers, and civil-society organizations working for peace in the North. This apparent paradox is explicable only by situating it in the ICC's current predicament, in the history of the Ugandan war, and in the broader dilemma of merging international and local justice, or reconciling the demands of justice and the demands of peace.

Proposals for an international criminal court have circulated for more than half a century. In the wake o...

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