Photo by Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0

On November 6, 2025, Pre-Trial Chamber III of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a decision confirming 39 charges brought by the Office of the Prosecutor against Joseph Kony, founder and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.

The Chamber found substantial grounds to believe that Kony is responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed between at least July 1, 2002, and December 31, 2005, in northern Uganda. It determined the existence of a non-international armed conflict during the period and that the LRA conducted widespread and systematic attacks directed against the civilian population.

The Chamber confirmed 29 charges of indirect co-perpetration or, in the alternative, ordering and inducing. These include the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder, torture or severe abuse and mistreatment as an inhumane act, enslavement, forced marriage as an inhumane act, forced pregnancy, rape, persecution on political grounds, age and gender grounds; and the war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population, murder and attempted murder, torture or alternatively cruel treatment, rape, conscripting children under the age of 15 into the LRA and using children to participate actively in hostilities, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, pillaging, and destroying the enemy’s property. The Chamber also confirmed 10 charges of direct perpetration by Kony against two victims, which are the crimes against humanity of enslavement, forced marriage as an inhumane act, rape, forced pregnancy, torture, persecution; and the war crimes of rape, torture, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy.

The case was committed to trial. Under the Rome Statute, a trial may only proceed in the presence of the accused and Kony must be present before the Court.