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A Ministry of Reconciliation: The Umuvumu Tree Project in Rwanda

With the imminent release of thousands of genocide prisoners angry over eight years of imprisonment without trial into communities still bitter over the violence and death, Prison Fellowship Rwanda, a local NGO, saw the potential for renewed violence and decided to act.

Abrahamsen, Therese and van der Merwe, Hugo. Reconciliation through Amnesty? Amnesty Applicants' Views of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

While much has been written about the TRC's amnesty process, this study seeks to address a serious gap in the research. Through an empirical evaluation of the perpetrators' own experiences of the amnesty process, this study addresses the need for a better understanding of how the amnesty process worked in practice, how it managed to draw perpetrators into applying for amnesty, how they felt about the process, how their lives were affected by the amnesty process, and whether and to what extent a public, conditional amnesty process served as a vehicle for achieving reconciliation between former perpetrators and survivors of gross human rights abuse and the reintegration of perpetrators into society. In order to complement this insider perspective of the amnesty process, this study also draws from interviews with former TRC staff and lawyers who were involved in every step of the amnesty process; from assisting applicants with their applications to representing them during the hearings. The aim of this report is both to inform further intervention with ex-combatants in South Africa, and to provide some insights that may guide other international efforts to engage perpetrators of human rights abuses in conditional amnesties, truth seeking, restorative justice and reconciliation processes.(excerpt)

Amstutz, Mark R.. "Is reconciliation possible after genocide? The case of Rwanda."

This essay explores the nature and role of the political reconciliation in reckoning with widespread regime atrocities. The role of truth is then examined in healing deeply divided societies. Because truth telling is regarded as conducive to the restoration of relationships, transitional justice scholars have claimed that the disclosure and public acknowledgment of regime offenses contributes to political reconciliation. Since reconciliation is not an inevitable byproduct of truth telling, the prudential quest to balance truth with peace and national unity is explored. (excerpt)

Beke, Dirk. Legislation and Decentralisation in Uganda: From Resistance Councils to Elected Local Councils with Guaranteed Representation

By analyzing the legislation process of decentralization in Uganda, Dirk Beke aims in this chapter to contribute to legal anthropology in the field of public law in Africa. He conducts his analysis not through a discussion of formal legal procedures in Uganda, but through examination of the legislative process in its political and social environment, as well as through exploration of the impact of the new rules on Ugandan society and government. More specifically, Beke looks at the origin, objectives, recent evolution, and implementation of legislation concerning decentralization in Uganda. Decentralization is an important component of the wider policy reform that started in 1986 after more than twenty years of dictatorship and civil war. While Beke does deal with certain elements of traditional leadership in his analysis, he focuses on the political environment and the role of other local actors, such as non-governmental organizations and foreign donors.

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.

Brounéus, Karen. Truth-Telling as Talking Cure? Insecurity and Retraumatization in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts.

This article presents unique material from in-depth interviews with 16 women in Rwanda who have testified in the gacaca, the village tribunals initiated to enhance reconciliation after the 1994 genocide. The aim of the interviews was to learn more about how testifying in such a public event as the gacaca affects psychological health. Do the women find the experience healing or retraumatizing? Are there other effects involved? There has been an assumption that testifying in truth and reconciliation commissions is a healing experience for survivors, and healing has been a central concept in the general reconciliation literature and in political rhetoric around truth commissions. However, the findings of the present study are alarming. Traumatization, ill-health, isolation, and insecurity dominate the lives of these testifying women. They are threatened and harassed before, during, and after giving testimony in the gacaca. The article provides a picture of the reconciliation process that we seldom see.(author's abstract)

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)

Connolly, Shannon. Gacaca: ADR as a Response to Rwanda Genocide

From April 1994 to June 1994 terror reigned throughout the tiny country of Rwanda, Africa. During those 100 days, approximately 1 million minority Tutsi were summarily massacred by the dominant Hutus in the Rwandan genocide. How does a country begin to recover from such a violent, devastating event? Shannon Connolly, of the Conflict Resolution Program (CRP), interviewed Ms. Ellen Yamshon about an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process, known as Gacaca, that is being implemented to address the crimes that occurred during the Rwandan genocide. (Author's Abstract)

Goldstein-Bolocan, Maya. Rwandan Gacaca: An Experiment in Transitional Justice.

For a country trying to deal with past injustice and violence while forging a democratic present and future, many challenges, complexities, and ambiguities arise. In this context, how does a country pursue a balance between victims and their families, perpetrators of injustice and violence, and a society that wants recognition of the past as well as stability and peace? In response to the horrific genocide by many Hutus against Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the spring and early summer of 1994, Rwanda has sought this balance through administration of state-run gacaca jurisdictions or processes. According to Maya Goldstein-Bolocan, these gacaca courts blend retributive and restorative justice approaches in ways that are highly innovative in the sphere of transitional justice. Goldstein-Bolocan explores the gacaca approach with respect to transitional justice issues, thus arguing that shifting the emphasis from the retributive nature of gacaca to its restorative potential offers better prospects for peace and reconciliation in deeply wounded societies.

Graybill, Lyn and Lanegran, Kimberly. Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Africa: Issues and Cases

This essay identifies a number of problematic issues concerning transitional justice and restorative justice in particular and suggests that they can be fruitfully explored through thoughtful examination of the truth-seeking projects of this issue's case countries: South Africa, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. One debate is whether political transitions genuinely require a unique type of justice or whether transitional justice results from a mere political choice which compromises justice. A second issue concerns transitional justice's goals. Related to this issue is the lack of clarity concerning the criteria for a successful transitional judicial structure. A third debate is whether truth commissions do actually bring healing and reconciliation among former enemies. Finally, there is a set of very practical concerns that need attention: what are the ideal balances between trials and truth commissions, domestic and international initiatives, efficiency and effectiveness? Authors' abstract.

Graybill, Lyn. Pursuit of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

How do governments deal with human rights violations committed by former regimes? South Africa's solution has been the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a carrot-and-stick approach that offers amnesty to those who come forward to disclose their deeds and the threat of criminal prosecution to those who do not. On the heels of an exceptional transition of power in which an entrenched ruling group relinquished control without imminent military threat, South Africa embarked on an equally unprecedented process of national reconciliation. Because the African National Congress (ANC) did not win a military battle but instead came to power through a negotiated settlement, compromises had to be made in order to win the National Party's support, to ensure democratic elections, and, above all, to promote peace. In the words of Kader Asmal, one of the key architects of the TRC who argued for a process that would not insist on criminal prosecutions, "We sacrifice justice for truth so as to consolidate democracy, to close the chapter of the past and to avoid confrontation." To acknowledge that the politics of compromise may be at odds with a strict notion of justicexe2x80x94what Reinhold Niebuhr called "perfect justice" is not to deny an ethical basis for the TRC. In assessing the TRC's success, one must ask: If not justice, what does the TRC offer? What follows is an assessment of the political, procedural, and ethical criticisms of the TRC. (excerpt)

Greenbaum, Bryant and Amoah, Jewel. Has Everything Been Done? The Nature of Assistance to Victims of Past Political Atrocities in Southern Africa.

In this research report, Jewel Amoah and Bryant Greenbaum review the availability and character of victim support services for survivors of political violence in the context of political transition and reconciliation in the following countries: Namibia; Mozambique; Zimbabwe; Malawi; and South Africa. They begin their paper by looking at relevant theoretical and international considerations with respect to international obligations and victim support services. They then profile each of the five countries in the following areas: historical background; the nature of political violence and the current political situation; views of the public, victims, and ex-combatants; government policy; and the role of civil society.

Hansen, Toran. The Gacaca Tribunals in Post-Genocide Rwanda.

Toran Hansen delves eloquently into the Gacaca tribunals in post-genocide Rwanda by first describing the history and background of the ethnic tensions that existed for decades between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority of the Rwandan people. Eventually this tension boiled over into a civil war that left up to 1 million Rwandans dead and up to 2 million displaced. As the genocide came to a close, thousands of people accused of participating in the genocide were arrested and jailed to await trial. It quickly became clear that another system needed to augment the work of the courts and ensure that the accused and the victims of the genocide got an opportunity to experience justice. The Rwandan government decided that the best option would be to blend an indigenous conflict resolution process called gacaca with the Western legal tradition. Gacaca tribunals, a grassroots community dispute resolution system, had traditionally been used as a way for community elders to resolve village conflicts, but it was modified to address the serious nature of the genocide-related cases that have been clogging up the Rwandan prisons and courts. Hansen focuses this article on how the gacaca tribunals have been modified for this purpose – including successes, criticisms, suggestions and concerns – from a modern restorative justice perspective.

Kirkby, Coel. Rwanda's Gacaca Courts: A Preliminary Critique.

abstract pending

Klute, Georg and von Trotha, Trutz. Roads to Peace: From Small War to Parasovereign Peace in the North of Mali

In this chapter Georg Klute and Trutz von Trotha present a report on two wars in Africa and the processes which contributed to peace in each situation. One xe2x80x93 little known outside of francophone media in Europe xe2x80x93 was the war between the Tuareg of Mali and Niger and the central governments in Bamako (Mali) and Niamey (Niger). For the purposes of this chapter, Klute and von Trotha discuss primarily the conflict in Mali, not Niger. The other was a war within the war of the Mali Tuareg against the government of Mali. In essence, this was a kind of civil war between two rebel movements of the Malian Tuareg. This conflict was ignored by the outside world and by Mali itself. Even the Tuareg do not like to talk about it now. In reporting on these two wars and the relevant peace processes, Klute and von Trotha structure their observations and considerations into three sections: the first section consists of a short history of the second Tuareg rebellion in Mali; the second section, or part I, deals with how peace was achieved between the rebel movements in this rebellion, (i.e., the road from social rebellion to parasovereign chiefdom); and the third section, or part II, examines links between local peace processes and programs and peace processes initiated and conducted at the national level (i.e., the road from peace management to parasovereign peace).

Mamdani, Mahmood. Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC).

As Mahmood Mamdani points out, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) resulted from legislation which was a political compromise. The compromise legislation both made the TRC possible and set the limits of the TRC’s work. Those limits prescribed the framework within which the TRC could interpret its terms of reference and define its agenda. Against all of this, Mamdani focuses on the TRC’s interpretation of its terms of reference. The TRC sought justice and reconciliation by offering individual amnesty for perpetrators of injustice who told the truth, and acknowledgement of the truth and reparations for victims of injustice. In short, the TRC offered amnesty for truth for perpetrators and restorative justice for victims. Accepting all of this, Mamdani identifies and examines three key limitations in the TRC’s report on its attempts to fulfill its mandate: the individualization of victims of apartheid; the failure to highlight the nature of apartheid as a form of power that governed natives differently from non-natives; and the extension of impunity to most perpetrators of apartheid.

Minow, Martha. Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Citizens of South Africa are confronting a painful past through the new nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, which thus far has heard thousands of reports (many televised) about murders, torture, and other human rights abuses that took place during the apartheid era. South Africa’s TRC is grounded in a constitutional commitment to the African concept of “ubuntu,� or humaneness. Amnesty is available on a conditional basis to alleged perpetrators. The author assesses the potential restorative power of truth-telling; the significance of sympathetic witnesses; and the tasks of both perpetrators and bystanders in the TRC process. Aspirations for justice are considered along with restoring dignity to victims, offering a basis for individual healing, and promoting reconciliation of a divided society. Author's abstract.

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)

Naidu, Ereshnee. The Ties that Bind: Strengthening the links between memorialisation and transitional justice.

The lack of empirical research around memorialisation as a process within transitional justice has resulted in ad-hoc, often uncoordinated and unmonitored memorialisation efforts that serve only the needs of specific groups, often rendering memorials political mechanisms of the state that are unable to achieve it's full potential as a peacebuilding mechanism. Furthermore, symbolic reparation is perceived by many as a non-essential recommendation -- a mechanism that diverts attention from what is perceived as more significant forms of reparation such as financial reparations or land restitution. It is within this context, that the following paper is presented. (excerpt)

Neubert, Dieter. The Peacemakers' Dilemma: The Role of NGOs in Processes of Peace-Building in Decentralised Conflicts

Emergency aid, observes Dieter Neubert, is one of the core activities of development agencies. In Africa, emergency situations are often linked with violent conflicts and wars. Whereas development agencies had long concentrated on aid and avoided political activities concerned with conflict regulation, that has changed. Since the 1990s development agencies and NGOs have taken on peace-building as a new sphere of activity. The basic idea is that development policy must also be peace policy. In this regard, peace-building is seen as a long-term process that includes reconciliation and healing as parts of promoting post-conflict stabilization and order. This notion of peace-building is also deeply connected with conceptions of human rights and political participation xe2x80x93 with justice, forgiving, and foundations for new social and political structures. Yet, the reality is that peace-building must often begin by collaborating with existing power structures responsible for violence and rights violations in the conflict situation. Thus NGOs face a dilemma between the desire for peace on the one hand and the commitment to human rights and justice on the other. Against this background, Neubert analyzes the role of development agencies and especially NGOs in peace-building.