Erasing the 'Victim' from the 'Victim–Perpetrator': Expressivist Messages in the Ongwen Trial Judgment.

This article critically examines the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Trial Chamber IX judgment and sentencing of Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier turned Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Northern Uganda. Using the theory of legal expressivism, the analysis reveals that the ICC's judgment maintains a rigid victim–perpetrator binary by largely silencing Ongwen's victimhood while emphasizing his perpetratorhood, thereby neglecting the complex continuum between victimization and criminal responsibility in former child soldiers. The article highlights the Court's limited engagement with the child soldiering phenomenon, its legalistic rejection of defenses linked to Ongwen's traumatic past, and the disproportionate stigmatization of Ongwen as embodying the LRA's collective criminality, while omitting broader conflict context and other actors' roles. It concludes with recommendations for a more nuanced judicial approach that acknowledges the duality of victim–perpetrators to better fulfill international criminal justice's expressive and didactic functions.