The ATJRN advances Transitional Justice in Africa through research, publication, networking meetings, and community work.
The information found on this website is a compilation of work undertaken by the network, its members, as well as its partners.
Our Strategy
Our objectives
The network has three key aims: (1) understanding the specific challenges facing transitional justice
processes in Africa, (2) promoting collaboration in research on the continent and (3) devising policy relevant research.
Mapping Challenges on the continent
1. The concept of Transitional Justice constitutes the globally dominant framework that informs states
undergoing political transition and exists as one component of the broader project of state building
centred upon the realisation of democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights. Yet building
sustainable peace require that legacies of violence are addressed and that the state functions for all
citizens irrespective of ethnicity, religion, gender and race. To date the practise and implementation of
transitional justice processes have gleaned ambiguous and contradictory results in Africa. Consequently
there is a contemporary intellectual movement among scholars that has critiqued both the conceptual
and practical limitations of transitional justice. But this movement has yet to fully engage with
practitioners involved in transitions on the continent. Since many African contexts continue to battle
enduring legacies of their abusive past this network is intended to elicit comparative continental
perspectives.
To map the challenges that have faced transitional justice processes in Africa the network
will:
a. Identify existing barriers to the effective coordination of scholarship and practice;
b. Map the fault-lines in transitional justice processes to date;
c. Identify synergies between UK and African-based scholars and senior-level practitioners who are
working in the field of transitional justice.
Building Capacity in Transitional Justice
2. The unique and urgent needs of post-conflict reconstruction in the African context have provided
opportunities for important local contributions to transitional justice. Significantly, the expectations of
transitional justice in African contexts have increasingly led to the fashioning of African approaches to
transitional justice with different emphases from that of the prevailing consensus of international human
rights law. By bringing together scholars from the UK and Africa the network will build the capacity of
African scholars to reflect on local processes and facilitate high quality collaborative research. To build
research capacity the network will:
a) Identify how to strengthen links between the Transitional Justice Institute and African scholars working
on transitional justice;
b) Identify critical areas for relevant and applicable transitional justice research;
c) Map key actors who should be invited to be part of developing the network.
Monitoring & Evaluating Scholarship
3. Current scholarship reflecting on African processes primarily emanates from northern-based
institutions and fails to interact with the particular challenges faced by local practitioners. This is despite
the fact that numerous civil society organisations, state institutions and regional organisations in Africa
are heavily invested in transitional justice interventions. This disparity between theory and practice is
pertinent given the adoption of the African Union’s Transitional Justice Policy 2019 since this calls directly
for context-specific comprehensive policies to achieve sustainable peace and justice. In order to devise
policy-relevant research this network intends to:
a) Evaluate how transitional justice scholars can better collaborate with practitioners;
b) Conceptualise future engaged scholarship projects relevant to continental needs;
c) Contribute to policy formulation and its implementation through devising a policy briefing for the
African Union.
Since South Africa’s transition from apartheid, African states have prominently featured as sites of
transitional justice experimentation and practice in the areas of criminal justice, truth commissions,
reparations and institutional reform. Yet recent events in South Sudan, Sudan and Zimbabwe have
revealed how essential it is to ensure that peace and justice are seen as mutually reinforcing
imperatives. Building sustainable peace require that legacies of violence are addressed and that the
state functions for all citizens irrespective of ethnicity, religion, gender and race. The Project “Fault-lines
in Transitional Justice” is intended to promote and support an inter-disciplinary network of UK and
African scholars and senior-level practitioners who are working in the field of transitional justice in
Africa. The establishment of this network will allow critical engagement by key actors on the fault-lines in
the implementation of transitional justice processes on the continent to date. Recognising that
transitional justice is a “living” field the network is intended to promote engaged practice and scholarship
dedicated to devising solutions to confront impunity on the continent. Currently transitional justice
scholars are often removed from senior-level practitioners who are working on transitional justice issues
on the ground. A key intention of the network will thus be to create strong cross-environmental dialogue
about local contexts of violence and potential areas for transformation. Its main objective is to both
scrutinise the challenges that have faced transitional justice processes in Africa and to allow policy relevant reflections based on the experience of those directly involved in continental based initiatives.