INTRODUCTION

The two dominant transitional justice mechanisms that have evolved in Western discourse and practice – truth commissions and criminal trials – have been differentiated partly in terms of their respective focus on the involvement of local communities, and specifically victims of human rights violations. Truth commissions, with their emphasis on allowing victims to tell their personal stories, are contrasted with criminal trials, in which victims are rarely given a voice, except as witnesses providing prosecution testimony. The often more explicit focus on reconciliation as a goal has meant that truth commissions tend to include encounters between perpetrators and victims in public hearings or other participatory processes. As a result, they have the potential to offer ‘complete local ownership of the process of transitional justice’. Criminal trials, by contrast, while often including reconciliation in their mandates, retain their formal legal character and emphasis on a top-down process designed primarily to satisfy the demands of international justice rather than the needs and priorities of the individuals and communities affected by the violence.

This experience with international criminal justice in particular has led increasingly to disquiet and calls for change among transitional justice policymakers, theorists and practitioners. These calls come from those who see the value of participatory processes from a philosophical or theoretical perspective as well as those whose observations stem from practical experience. They mirror arguments for greater civil society participation and local ownership in development and peacebuilding. In his 2004 report on transitional justice, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for ‘nationally led strategies of assessment and consultation carried out with the active and meaningful participation of national stakeholders’ which he defined as including ‘justice sector officials, civil society, professional associations, traditional leaders and key groups, such as women, minorities, displaced persons and refugees’. Annan went on to say that ‘civil society organizations, national legal associations, human rights groups and advocates of victims and the vulnerable must all be given a voice in these processes’.