You cannot compare apples to oranges: Ubushingantahe vs. criminal justice

from Josh Perry's post on Africa Faith & Justice Network:

Conflict resolution in Burundi was halted for decades due to the ongoing ethnic strife between the Hutus and the Tutsis. As the Burundian civil war continued, a British based organization named ActionAid helped to rebuild customary institutions that were destroyed by the conflict, and the Bashingantahe council, known also as Ubushingantahe, was one. 

However, in 2000, the passage of the Arusha Accord settled the civil war, brought about peace negotiations, and formally recognized the Ubushingantahe as a conciliatory judicial mechanism.

Jun 23, 2010 Country:Burundi, Region: Africa, National Reconciliation, Indigenous

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Sequencing the administration of justice to enable the pursuit of peace: Can the ICC play a role in complementing restorative justice?

from the article by Tim Murithi:

The notion of justice remains an essentially contested concept. In fact there are multiple dimensions to justice. Retributive justice seeks to ensure prosecution followed by punishment for crimes or atrocities committed. Restorative justice strives to promote societal harmony through a quasi-judicial process of truth telling, acknowledgement, remorse, reparations, forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. Retributive or punitive justice is generally administered by a state-sanctioned legal institution or through the remit of international law. Restorative justice draws upon a range of mechanisms including truth commissions and other societal reconciliation institutions.

Jun 08, 2010 Retribution, Theory, National Reconciliation

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Collected essays, 2008-2010: Debating international justice in Africa

from the announcement by University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies:

Assembling nearly two years of critical debates convened by Oxford Transitional Justice Research, the collection of nearly 60 essays explores the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other judicial processes at a crucial stage in the development of international justice in Africa. The June 2010 review conference of the ICC in Kampala provides an opportunity to identify the successes and shortcomings of these processes and to lay the foundation for more effective approaches in the future.

The debates in this volume highlight that there is major disagreement over the performance and legacies of international justice institutions in Africa. The purpose of this collection is to deepen discussions of these issues and to provoke new questions about the past and future directions of international justice in Africa.

Jun 07, 2010 Country:Sudan, Region: Africa, National Reconciliation

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Winning the invisible conflict: Is Sri Lanka headed for sustainable peace?

from Pushpi Weerakoon's article in groundviews.com:

....So what exactly is restorative justice? According to Dr Howard Zehr, my Professor of Restorative Justice at the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding at the Eastern Mennonite University, restorative justice ‘involves those who have a stake in a specific offence collectively identifying and addressing harms, needs and obligations, in order to heal and put things right’. It requires recognition of the people who have been hurt, and what they need (in order to alleviate that hurt).

Similarly, it recognizes who has an obligation for causing that hurt, and what process can be put in place to make things right. It brings two parties together in the understanding that unless and until the truth has been told, however unpalatable it might be, in the open and forgiveness sought, there can never be any reconciliation. This is true whether it be two individuals, two factions, two communities, two ethnicities/cultures or two countries.

Jun 03, 2010 Country:Sri Lanka, Region: Pacific, National Reconciliation, Indigenous

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