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National Reconciliation

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Rojas Mendoza, Dionisio. 2006. Design of a Restorative Justice Process: Inter-Sectoral Commission for Life and Human RIghts. Barrancabermeja (Colombia). Eastern Mennonite University. Conflict Transformation Program.

This article discusses the possible design of a restorative response to mass violence in Colombia.

The Bougainville Project of PEACE Foundation Melanesia

Founded in 1995, PEACE Foundation Melanesia is a grassroots organization working on peacemaking in Papua New Guinea. Much of its early work focused on Bougainville training village leaders to be peacemakers.

“Operation Regeneration”: Applying the Lessons of Bougainville to International Peace Operations

Using lessons learned from Bougainville, this article presents a hypothetical civil war and how peace operations might respond. The article is excerpted from the PhD dissertation of Peter Reddy who studied peacemaking operations in Bougainville and Somalia. His complete dissertation, Peace Operations and Restorative Justice: Groundwork for Post-conflict Regeneration, is attached.

Organizing Ex-Combatants for Peace in Mozambique

As violent civil conflicts end, ex-combatants are sometimes treated as a risk to social peace and stability. Yet, as one organization in Mozambique demonstrates, ex-combatants can be key players in the peacebuilding process, promoting peace and reconciliation, and mediating peaceful solutions to conflicts.

Ridell, Jennifer. Addressing Crimes Against International Law: Rwanda’s Gacaca in Practice

Rwanda experienced horrific genocide in 1994. In its aftermath, national and international trials were established but these trials failed to deal expeditiously with the large numbers of suspects awaiting trial. To combat this, Rwanda introduced an innovative participative justice mechanism, Gacaca. Modern Gacaca is based on a traditional Rwandan restorative justice mechanism of the same name. Its rooting in Rwanda's history makes Gacaca a much more acceptable form of justice to the Rwandan people than international trials given the international community's abandonment of Rwanda during the genocide. While Gacaca falls short of many international fair trial standards it remains Rwanda’s best hope as a wholly Rwandan process. But, Gacaca is more than just a judicial instrument, it has restorative justice at its origin and seeks, as its ultimate aim, to reconcile Rwanda’s divided communities. To reach this aim, Gacaca has several other objectives including discovering the truth of what happened in 1994, ending impunity which has plagued Rwanda since independence and allowing the Rwandan population to participate in the search for justice at a local level. This thesis studies the importance of these aims to Gacaca and whether the Gacaca courts are meeting their optimistic objectives in order to evaluate whether Gacaca is succeeding in Rwanda. Research was conducted through interviews throughout Rwanda and much civil society research was studied as well as material discussing the objectives from a more conceptual perspective. Gacaca's potential is outstanding and its objectives all play a very important role which, if met, will secure a much more stable future for Rwanda. In practice, however, these objectives are not being met. The population is not actively participating in the trials thus the truth is not aired. Moreover, the perception of victor's justice hampers the ability of Gacaca to end impunity in Rwanda.

Colvin, Christopher J.. 'We Are Still Struggling': Storytelling, Reparations and Reconciliation after the TRC.

Since the inception of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the twin projects of 'healing' and 'reconciliation' have gained prominence as key elements of a particular model of socio- political transformation being articulated in South Africa. Though by no means universally accepted, an emphasis on the ideas of healing and reconciliation formed the focus of much of the TRC's self-presentation, the government's support for the TRC and the media's representation of its work. As the most public, most publicised and best funded and supported of healing and reconciliation projects, the TRC provided both the impetus and the model for many of the parallel and subsequent projects in civil society that have tried to add to, complement, extend and critique the work initiated by the TRC. As Undine Kayser mentions, however, there remain 'few institutionalised post-TRC spaces for South Africans to practically engage with personal memories and the apartheid past' (Kayser, 2001, p. 3). This report considers one of those institutionalised spaces: the Cape Town Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture and the Western Cape Branch of the Khulumani Support Group that grew out of the work of the Trauma Centre. Like the TRC, these two groups confront past memories of violence and abuse in an attempt to heal from and overcome the emotional toll these memories continue to exact. However, the contexts examined here are different to that of the TRC and the work, at least of the support group, is often oriented towards meeting longer-term economic survival and political advocacy needs as much as to enabling psychological recovery. Though the Trauma Centre facilitates a range of programmes that might be considered part of the broader project of healing and reconciliation, this report will focus on one of its programs, the Torture Project, and in particular, the now-independent victim support group that grew out of the work of that project. What follows is both a description of the development and current activities and organisation of these two groups as well as a consideration of the impacts of their work, the challenges they face and the broader issues they raise about the problems of bringing about personal, social and political change in post-apartheid South Africa. This report will focus on the work of the support group, and in particular, on the work and perspectives of the group's executive committee. (excerpt)

Naidu, Ereshnee. Empowerment through Living Memory: A community-centred model for memorialisation.

Memory plays various but often significant roles within transitional justice societies. Since memory within a transitional justice society is often a social construct that is mediated between the state and the individuals within that state, memory may take the form of selective amnesia where the state influences collective memory formation. Within this context human rights violations and the atrocities of the past are often 'forgotten' in an attempt to forge immediate reconciliation. However, various studies have shown that such processes tend to hinder reconciliation as well as fuel underlying tensions within a transitional society. However, if used constructively, memory and memorialisation processes can play a significant role in the reconciliation process as it allows for the recognition of individual victims and survivors of the conflict; allows different generations to understand the conflict and mediate between the past and the present; and allows the society collective spaces for mourning that can promote the process of healing past wounds. In view of the peace-building capacity of memory work and its potential to empower communities by forging reconciliation, CSVR embarked on a community-centred intervention project. The following report outlines the five phases of the process that focused on a community centred approach to memorialisation. This report aims to give practitioners working within the field of memorialisation a detailed understanding of the process that was undertaken in the different phases of the project so as to enable practitioners and communities themselves to initiate their own memory projects. The first part of the report, will describe the information-gathering phase, and will outline the methodology, findings and some of the recommendations of the community needs assessment that was conducted in the Vaal. The second part of the report, will describe the actual intervention phase. The intervention focussed on training members of the Khulumani Support group – the training focussed both on conceptual issues around memory as well as basic project development with a specific focus on memory work. The second part of this report will also include a description of the design of the training manual,1 the selection of participants, the facilitated workshops that culminated in the conceptualisation of a memory project by the group; and finally, the evaluation phase.(excerpt)

Stahn, Carsten. Accommodating Individual Criminal Responsibility and National Reconciliation: The UN Truth Commission for East Timor

In both the distant past and the near past, the population of East Timor has suffered severe human rights violation. Carsten Stahn sketches the history of those violations at the outset of this paper. The most recent episode occurred in the latter quarter of the twentieth century following Indonesiaxe2x80x99s invasion and occupation of East Timor, especially following a 1999 UN-organized referendum on independence from Indonesia. In 2001 the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) established the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CRTR). The aim was to promote national reconciliation and healing. As Stahn explains, the creation of CRTR fit with the increasing use and refinement of such mechanisms for dealing with past injustices and assisting with transitional nation-building. In this context, Stahn examines the general features of the CRTR and the East Timorese justice and reconciliation model.

Brudholm, Thomas. The Justice of Truth and Reconciliation

As Thomas Brudholm comments, while the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has provided the model for new commissions in other countries dealing with periods of violence and human rights violations, the TRC is not a perfect model simply to be replicated in any given context. Significant questions have been raised and debated about its mandate, procedures, principles, and more. In particular, there has been intense debate over moral issues relating to xe2x80x93 among other matters xe2x80x93 justice, accountability, amnesty for truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Against this background Brudholm reviews two anthologies of essays on South Africa and the TRC: Looking Back Reaching Forward (2000), and Truth v. Justice (2000). The two books provide a variety of incisive reflections on the span of moral, psychological, legal, and political issues clustering around the truth commission process in South Africa.

Andrews, Penelope E. Reparations for Apartheid's Victims: The Path to Reconciliation?

The question of making reparations to victims in situations of systemic and widespread injustice and human rights violations is fraught with difficult complexities and questions. For example, who counts as a victim, and who makes the determination? What are the causal connections between perpetrators and victims for purpose of legal liability? Who are the beneficiaries? What counts as reparations? These and many other questions confronted those responsible for the transition to democracy and for the new legal and political order in South Africa following the end of apartheid. With all of this in mind, Penelope Andrews examines the South African context of reparations and reconciliation with the broader project of national reconstruction. As part of this, and with specific reference to issues of reparations, racial healing, racial harmony, reconciliation, and nation-building, she discusses the role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Hatch, John B. Reconciliation: Building a Bridge from Complicity to Coherence in the Rhetoric of Race Relations

Race relations xe2x80x93 racial inequality and racial antagonism xe2x80x93 remain a significant problem in the United States, writes John Hatch. Concurrently, there is an international trend toward interethnic and interracial reconciliation, as witnessed in South Africa, Australia, Ireland, and other countries. Initiatives to overcome ethnic and racial conflicts have included such measures as public confession, apology, forgiveness, and even reparation in some cases. One commentator on the subject of race, Mark Lawrence McPhail, has briefly noted the potential value and validity of racial reconciliation in light of his theory of xe2x80x9crhetoric as coherence.xe2x80x9d Yet, he has not explored this idea in depth. In response, Hatch in this article aims to show that public intergroup reconciliation can constitute a substantial xe2x80x93 not merely verbal xe2x80x93 rhetorical bridge between the reality of racism and McPhailxe2x80x99s ideal of coherence. Hatch calls this coherent reconciliation xe2x80x93 reconciliation consisting not of xe2x80x9cmere rhetoricxe2x80x9d but of efforts to build a solidly grounded bridge from a racist past to a more just and harmonious interracial future.

Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. Transition and the Reasons of Memory

In this essay, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze delves into questions pertaining to forgiveness in the aftermath of human rights abuses under apartheid in South Africa. For example, what motivates victims of abuses to forgive? What does it mean for victims to forgive the past? What kind of morality should govern questions about processes connected with forgiveness such as offering or not offering forgiveness, accepting or not accepting forgiveness, and so on? In a similar vein, what are the ethics of forgiveness in relation to the necessary requirements of justice and the memory of past acts of state-sanctioned crimes? Eze reflects on these and other questions to shed light on reasons for forgiveness and the ethical and political uses of public memories of gross, systemic, state-sanctioned human rights violations.

Fletcher, Laurel E and Weinstein, Harvey M. Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation

As Laurel Fletcher and Harvey Weinstein note at the outset of their paper, there has been a growing interest in recent years in the question of how countries recover from episodes of mass violence or gross human rights violations perpetrated by and upon their own people or peoples. In this regard, much attention has been given to transitional justice, to processes whereby a state or society seeks to deal with the violations of a prior period or prior government. A prominent response for responding to mass violence and gross human rights violations, write Fletcher and Weinstein, has been international trials for individual perpetrators of war crimes and other serious offenses against international law. Some who advocate this approach conceive of international criminal trials as the centerpiece of social repair, with “social reconciliation�? as one of the mandates of such proceedings. Fletcher and Weinstein explore the limitations of international trials, and they offer a new model to understand the contribution of trials to social reconstruction.

Sarkin, Jeremy and Daly, Erin. Too Many Questions, Too Few Answers: Reconciliation in Transitional Societies

With a large number of countries in recent years seeking to make the transition from a period of violence and human rights violations to a more democratic and stable society, the language of reconciliation has become prominent; the pursuit of reconciliation has been touted as the cure for the ills and divisiveness in each country. Jeremy Sarkin and Erin Daly acknowledge both the prevalence and the appeal of the idea of reconciliation. At the same time, they believe that there are serious questions and issues connected with the notion and pursuit of reconciliation, and that these questions and issues are not being adequately considered and addressed by policy makers. Hence, Sarkin and Daly explore certain questions that confront an incipient government in promoting reconciliation as the cure for ills in a transitional society. They first raise broad conceptual questions about reconciliation. This leads to discussion of historical factors fostering reconciliation initiatives, the effectiveness of the pursuit of reconciliation, and mechanisms by which nations pursue reconciliation.

Chapman, Audrey R and Ball, Patrick. The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala

At the outset of this paper, Audrey Chapman and Patrick Ball remark upon the twentieth century’s legacy of gross human rights violations and mass atrocities in country after country. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, many countries have established truth commissions or similar entities to address past evils and to promote healing and reconciliation in their societies. Truth commissions provide an alternative or third way to two other possible responses – namely, prosecutorial processes (e.g., the Nuremberg trials and the prospective International Criminal Court) or blanket amnesty. Given the importance often assigned to truth commissions, Chapman and Ball emphasize the need to inquire into the nature of the “truth�? that such commissions are mandated to find. The documentation and interpretation of truth, they assert, is more complex and ambiguous than many proponents of truth commissions assume. With examples from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala, Chapman and Ball consider some of the complexities and factors shaping the effort of truth commission, and they evaluate the kinds of truths that such commissions can most appropriately seek to determine.

Borland, Rosilyne M. The Gacaca Tribunals and Rwanda after Genocide: Effective Restorative Community Justice or Further Abuse of Human Rights?

The genocide in Rwanda in the spring of 1994 was one of the world’s most horrific acts of collective violence. National and international attempts to deal with suspected perpetrators of the genocide have not fulfilled expectations, remarks Rosilyne Borland. The national legal system of Rwanda, she also states, has failed to administer justice adequately. In response to all of this, and as pressure increases to address the past and process the thousands still in prison, the Rwandan government has devised an alternative justice mechanism. It is called gacaca. Some claim that gacaca is bringing healing and reconciliation to Rwanda. Others warn that it makes possible further human rights abuses. With all of this in view, Borland analyzes the gacaca law, its early implementation, and relevant justice theories (especially restorative justice and community justice theories). Her aim is to examine whether Rwanda is succeeding in achieving justice after the genocide of 1994.

Eisikovits, Nir. Forget Forgiveness: On the Benefits of Sympathy for Political Reconciliation

The work of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has generated a great deal of interest in the role of forgiveness in politics. More specifically, it has raised the question of whether forgiveness should be a constitutive part of reconciliation processes between groups. In this paper, I argue that it should not, and that it might be both more useful and more realistic to consider something like Adam Smith's notion of 'sympathy' instead. The first part examines the arguments for and against policies promoting political forgiveness. The second part suggests sympathy as an alternative. The third part considers and rejects some objections to the employment of sympathy in this context. Author's abstract.

Valji, Nahla. Race, Citizenship and Violence in Transitioning Societies: A Guatemalan case study

The CSVR Race and Citizenship in Transition Series has set out to examine the ways in which ordinary citizens engage with issues of race and citizenship in a post-transitional society, ten years into the country's democracy. The goal of the project is to understand the long-term impact of structures, in particular truth commissions, as well as the model or type of transition and democracy, in order to examine the impact these elements have on violence and racial identity during times of transition. In addition to looking at South Africa's own experience (cf. reports in the Race and Citizenship in Transition Series), the series incorporates an in-depth examination of these same elements during the course of Guatemala's transition to democracy. The following paper focuses on race, and the nature of negotiated transitions, as well as the thin line between political and social conflict; a line which is often blurred during democratic transitions. In many ways, Guatemala reflects important similarities with South Africa. (excerpt)

van der Merwe, Hugo. Reparations in Southern Africa

This one is among the first comparative studies of reparation in the light of transitional justice in Southern Africa largely unexplored, save of course for South Africa. At the core of the South African transformation is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) considered by some to be "the most far-reaching and the most effective of its genre". Similarly, South Africa's Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee of the TRC is the source of scholarly and policy debates in transitional justice circles worldwide. Yet, despite its popularity, South Africa's transitional process merits critical examination especially needed with the reparation issue which generated controversy and acrimony. This study seeks to add to the growing literature on reparations to victims of human rights abuses in the context of a political transition, by examining the experiences of South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Mozambique in developing official, non-judicial reparation programmes for victims/survivors of human rights abuses. For each country, the study explores: the nature of the political transition; the nature of the human rights violations or political atrocities that took place; the identifiable needs arising as consequences from human rights violations; programmes (if any) aimed at providing "reparation" and their targeted beneficiaries; factors accounting for the development (or non-development) of these programmes; and the consequences of the reparation programmes. Any debate on overcoming an unjust past ultimately has to deal with the issue of reparation, which should not be confused with reconstruction or reconciliation. (excerpt)

Allen, Jonathan. Memory and Politics: Three Theories of Justice in Regime Transitions

In his essay, “The Contest of the Faculties�?, published in 1798, Immanuel Kant presents an intriguing reflection on the French Revolution. The moral significance of the revolution, he suggests, is to be found, not in any event directly connected to it, but in the reaction of “disinterested sympathy�? towards the revolutionary cause on the part of onlookers. Because this response was potentially hazardous and had nothing to do with selfinterest, Kant sees it as the result of a “moral disposition within the human race�?, and thus as a moral phenomenon that can never be forgotten. Presumably for Kant, this serves as grounds for hope of moral progress in the form of movement towards a global “federal union�? of independent republics, a union that would secure universal peace. Though I am no latter-day Kant, my central aim in this paper is to identify a novel moral phenomenon that is surely as significant, though considerably less exhilarating, than the circumstances noted by Kant in 1798. I am referring here to the remarkable rise of a series of practices and institutions operating at both the national and global level, designed to respond to war crimes, atrocities, human rights abuses, and grave injustices committed by states or political movements against minorities and individuals. Arguably, this is a development that takes its inception in the Nuremberg Trials and the passage of the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948. The Eichmann Trial of 1961 also played an important role in alerting people to the idea that past human rights abuses require a response in the present; indeed, most of the manifestations of memory politics that concern me here have occurred since this trial. (excerpt)