scholarly journals (En)gendering post-conflict agency: Women’s experiences of the ‘local’ in Sierra Leone

2021 ◽  
pp. 001083672110007
Author(s):  
Laura S Martin
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
International Programs ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Gendered Power

This article explores how female agency and experience manifest in a local Sierra Leonean peacebuilding program known as Fambul Tok. While post-conflict literature, namely transitional justice and peacebuilding, has become more critical in recent years, there is still a tendency to generalize both the ‘local’ and ‘women’. There is, however, much greater scope to delineate how local programs shape and are shaped by women in these settings. While Fambul Tok was, at least theoretically, meant to better align with the needs and priorities of Sierra Leoneans, including women, the empirics suggest that female engagement ultimately results in a wide range of outcomes, which are not necessarily more ‘empowering’, ‘transformative’ or ‘good’ than international programs. Drawing on original empirical data from Fambul Tok, this article highlights the complexity of gendered power relations within these programs and how individual women have multiple, diverse and contested forms of agency and experiences within local settings.

scholarly journals Restorative Justice in Transitional Sierra Leone

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Apori Nkansah
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Commissions ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
Conflict Reconciliation

Intense debate surrounds truth commissions as to their mission, perceived roles and outcomes. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of truth commissions in post-conflict settings. It examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for Sierra Leone, the first truth commission to be engaged concurrently with a retributive mechanism, the Special Court for Sierra Leone for transitional justice. The study finds that the TRC provided an opening for conversation in Sierra Leonean communities to search for the meanings of truth about the conflict. In this way the communities simultaneously created an understanding of the situation and set reconciliation directions and commitment from the process of creative conversation.  This notwithstanding, the TRC did not have the needed public cooperation because the people were not sure the war was over and feared that their assailants could harm them if they disclosed the truth to the TRC. The presence of the Special Court also created tensions and fears rendering the transitional environment unfriendly to the reconciliation and truth telling endeavors of the TRC. The study has implications for future truth commissions in that the timing for post-conflict reconciliation endeavors should take into consideration the state of the peace equilibrium of the societies involved. It should also be packaged for harmonious existence in a given transitional contexts, particularly where it will coexist with a retributive mechanism.

scholarly journals Delivering output and struggling for change: Tacit activism among professional transitional justice work in Sierra Leone and Kenya

2021 ◽  
pp. 001083672110008
Author(s):  
Anne Menzel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Professional Contexts ◽  
High Politics

The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, aside and beyond high politics and officially important actors, actions, processes and events. Based on field research in Sierra Leone and Kenya, I describe and discuss everyday examples of a specific form of activism, namely tacit activism that I encountered with three key interlocutors, one Sierra Leonean and two Kenyan nationals involved in professional donor-funded TJ work. Their activism was ’tacit’ in the sense that it was not part of their official project activities and my interlocutors did not advertise their extra plans and efforts to (prospective) donors. And yet, it was precisely through these tacit plans and efforts that they hoped to meet at least some of the expectations that had been raised in the context of professional TJ projects.

More than Words: Restorative Justice Concepts in Transitional Justice Settings

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Clamp ◽  
Jonathan Doak
Keyword(s):  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Wide Range

This article considers the applicability of restorative justice literature in the transitional justice arena. The authors argue that while restorative justice is applied to a wide range of conflicts, the established literature is often of limited value within a transitional context. Insufficient attention is often paid to the inherent difficulties in importing theories, concepts and practices designed for the context of ‘settled’ societies into post-conflict environments. Significantly more consideration needs to be given to the practical operation of transitional justice mechanisms, as well as their underlying normative bases, so that they might live up to the claims of many commentators that transitional justice is ‘restorative’.

Back to the Future? Confronting the Role(s) of Natural Resources in Armed Conflict Through the Lenses of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 373-400
Author(s):  
Eliana Cusato
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commissions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Conflict Strategies

Abstract Natural resources are critical factors in the transition from conflict to peace. Whether they contributed to, financed or fuelled armed conflict, failure to integrate natural resources into post-conflict strategies may endanger the chances of a long-lasting and sustainable peace. This article explores how Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (trcs), as transitional justice institutions, can contribute to addressing the multifaceted role of natural resources in armed conflict. Drawing insights from the practice of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian trcs in this area, the article identifies several ways in which truth-seeking bodies may reinforce post-conflict accountability and avoid the future reoccurrence of abuses and conflict by actively engaging with the natural resource-conflict link. As it is often the case with other transitional justice initiatives, trcs’ engagement with the role of natural resources in armed conflict brings along opportunities and challenges, which are contextual and influenced by domestic and international factors.

scholarly journals Memory in the Aftermath of War: Australian Responses to the Vietnamese Refugee Crisis of 1975

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (02) ◽  
pp. 183-201
Author(s):  
Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Vietnamese Refugees ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Archival Documentation ◽  
National Archives Of Australia ◽  
Vietnamese Refugee

Abstract This article interweaves the personal and archival by exploring the intersection of official Australian records on the fall of Saigon and government handling of Vietnamese refugees in 1975 with my family history. As transitional justice addresses the legacies of human rights violations including the displacement and resettlement of refugees in post-conflict contexts, Australian responses to the Vietnamese refugee crisis of 1975 provide a relevant case study. Drawing on a wide range of archival documentation at the National Archives of Australia and the National Library of Australia, including policy papers, Senate findings, confidential cables, ministerial submissions, private correspondence and photographs, I trace the effect of government decisions on Vietnamese refugees seeking asylum. In the process I reveal actions by senior bureaucrats and in particular by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam that are largely unknown. Combining archival research with personal history enables me to not only shed light on past actions of governance and uncover past injustice but also explore the enduring impact of government decision-making on individual lives.

scholarly journals From Depletion to Regeneration: Addressing Structural and Physical Violence in Post-Conflict Economies

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirin M Rai ◽  
Jacqui True ◽  
Maria Tanyag
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Gendered Power

Abstract Drawing on depletion through social reproduction and political economy of violence against women (PEVAW) approaches, we show how the context of violence intensifies the depletion of women’s lives as they labor to meet their household needs; and how this depletion heightens their vulnerability to violence in conflict-affected contexts and inhibits their roles in peacebuilding. We propose the concept of the “regenerative state,” as a post-conflict moment of openness when state policy underpinned by attention to issues of depletion, social reproduction, and violence against women can help reshape gendered power relations in post-conflict transitions.

scholarly journals A cat-and-Maus game: the politics of truth and reconciliation in post-conflict comics

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (04) ◽  
pp. 588-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Redwood ◽  
Alister Wedderburn
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Sierra Leonean ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
Aesthetic Politics ◽  
Commission Report ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractSeveral scholars have raised concerns that the institutional mechanisms through which transitional justice is commonly promoted in post-conflict societies can alienate affected populations. Practitioners have looked to bridge this gap by developing ‘outreach’ programmes, in some instances commissioning comic books in order to communicate their findings to the people they seek to serve. In this article, we interrogate the ways in which post-conflict comics produce meaning about truth, reconciliation, and the possibilities of peace, focusing in particular on a comic strip published in 2005 as part of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report into the causes and crimes of the 1991–2002 Civil War. Aimed at Sierra Leonean teenagers, the Report tells the story of ‘Sierrarat’, a peaceful nation of rats whose idyllic lifestyle is disrupted by an invasion of cats. Although the Report displays striking formal similarities with Art Spiegelman's Maus (a text also intimately concerned with reconciliation, in its own way), it does so to very different ends. The article brings these two texts into dialogue in order to explore the aesthetic politics of truth and reconciliation, and to ask what role popular visual media like comics can play in their practice and (re)conceptualisation.

scholarly journals Male Directed Sexual Violence in Conflict: A Challenge for Gender Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Robert O'Mochain
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Feminist Analysis ◽  
Male Survivors ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
Gendered Power

In recent years, extensive empirical data has indicated that acts of severe sexual assault are being perpetrated against large numbers of men in many areas of conflict around the world. In spite of such data, recognition of this problem within gender studies remains limited. This is due to many reasons including the opposition of a variety of feminism that is reluctant to acknowledge male victimhood. This paper argues that feminist reservations about a focus on male-directed sexual violence in conflict are unfounded, especially as adherence to dichotomous gender models of “male equals perpetrator/female equals victim” ignores the comparable suffering of male survivors. A feminist analysis is enriched and complemented by a focus on male survivors and on the gendered power relations that operate among men.

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