Transitional Justice is a range of processes made by policies and measures that allow dealing with the evil past after a protracted civil war or dictatorship regime. It aims at accountability, putting an end to impunity and restoring relationships by reconciliation and in rendering Justice to the victims of mass violations of human rights. Justice in a post-conflict state is a baffling issue. It quests to know the truth about what happened, whose truth is it, and who is benefiting from it? In this course, we will focus on these 8 points: the origin of Transitional Justice, the success or the Failure of Truth Commissions, Indigenous Justice, Reconciliation, Reparative and Restorative Justice, Amnesty, international and national courts. We look at Indigenous Justice in Africa such as Kpaa Mende, Magamba spirit, Ubushingantahe and Gacaca. From the South African truth commission to the Gacaca jurisdictions, we will try to understand how the transitional justice mechanisms are shaped by circumstances. As this course is designed for Burundian students, particular attention will be paid to the establishment of the transitional justice in that country.

This book offers fresh insights on the `justice versus peace' dilemma, examining the challenges and prospects for promoting both peace and accountability, specifically in African countries affected by conflict or political violence. Peace versus Justice? draws on the expertise of many insider analysts, individuals who are not only authorities on transitional accountability processes, but who have participated in them, whether as legal practitioners or commissioners. This volume examines the wide array of experiences with transitional justice both within and outside states on the continent, spanning a range of countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Mozambique, Sudan, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. While the primary focus is on processes in Africa, many of the contributors also draw on lessons from earlier processes elsewhere in the world, particularly Latin America. The chapters in this volume consider a wide range of approaches to accountability and peacebuilding. These include not only domestic courts and tribunals, hybrid tribunals, or the International Criminal Court, but also truth commissions and informal or non-state justice and conflict resolution processes. Taken together, they demonstrate the wealth of experiences and experimention in transitional justice processes on the continent.

This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This book explores how competing worldviews impact on intergroup relations and building a sustainable peace in culturally diverse societies. It raises the question of what happens in a culturally diverse society when competing values and ways of interpreting reality collide and what this means for peace-building and the goal of reconciliation. Moreover, it provides a valuable and needed contribution to how peace-building interventions can become more sustainable if tied into local values and embedded in a society’s system of meaning-making. The book engages with questions relating to the extent transitional policies speak to universal values and individualist societies and the implications this might have for how they are implemented in collective societies with different values and forms of social organisation. It raises the question of cultural equality and transformation and whether or not this is something that needs to be addressed within peace-building theory. It argues that inculcating worldview into peace-building theory and practice is a vital part of restoring dignity and promoting healing among victims and formerly oppressed groups. This book, therefore, makes an important contribution to what is at best a partially researched topic by providing a deeper understanding of how identity and culture intersect with peace-building when seeking to build a sustainable peace.

Effective peace agreements are rarely accomplished by idealists. The process of moving from situations of entrenched oppression, armed conflict, open warfare, and mass atrocities toward peace and reconciliation requires a series of small steps and compromises to open the way for the kind of dialogue and negotiation that make political stability, the beginning of democracy, and the rule of law a possibility. For over forty years, Charles Villa-Vicencio has been on the front lines of Africa's battle for racial equality. In Walk with Us and Listen, he argues that reconciliation needs honest talk to promote trust building and enable former enemies and adversaries to explore joint solutions to the cause of their conflicts. He offers a critical assessment of the South African experiment in transitional justice as captured in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and considers the influence of ubuntu, in which individuals are defined by their relationships, and other traditional African models of reconciliation. Political reconciliation is offered as a cautious model against which transitional politics needs to be measured. Villa-Vicencio challenges those who stress the obligation to prosecute those allegedly guilty of gross violation of human rights, replacing this call with the need for more complementarity between the International Criminal Court and African mechanisms to achieve the greater goals of justice and peace building.