Peace without justice is only a symbolic peace. But how can justice be restored after conflict? This article from the journal Development argues that international peacebuilders have sometimes imposed rather than proposed and facilitated solutions. In order to rejoin peace and justice there must be a mutual agreement between stakeholders in post-conflict societies: civilians and combatants, citizens and governments, international peacebuilders and national recipients. The most important dimension is the role of the local population.
Restoring justice after conflict is as much a political imperative as a social necessity. Political leaders will not make concessions or respect peace agreements unless grievances have been addressed. Equally, the public will not trust authorities and invest in peace unless their injustices are tackled. Yet, remarrying peace with justice after conflict has torn them apart is a difficult task. It is rarely undertaken comprehensively, producing inadequate results and often setting back the peace process itself.
Three distinct, interdependent dimensions of justice are relevant to building peace:
- Rectificatory justice: This is rectifying the injustices that are direct consequences of conflict including human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since 1945, there has been more deliberate targeting of civilians. The need to address these violations is commonly referred to as ‘transitional justice’.
- Legal justice: Breakdown of the rule of law, political manipulation and corruption in the legal system are common symptoms of conflict. These result in a lack of legal redress for injustices experienced by the population.
- Distributive justice: The structural injustices and distributive inequalities that underlie the causes of conflict are often neglected. It is both the experiences and perceptions of exclusion, rather than poverty or ethnicity in themselves, which matter.
The task of restoring justice after conflict has been reduced to a preoccupation with injustices related to the consequences of conflict. To lay the foundation for a lasting peace, all three dimensions of justice need to be addressed.
- Peacebuilding consists of a ‘negative’ task of preventing relapse into violence and a ‘positive’ task of aiding recovery and removing underlying causes of war. It is essential to respect the delicate balance between these two.
- International rule of law programmes tend to ignore political ramifications and fail to consider context or longer-term objectives. Incremental programmes should embed the rule of law in justice and human rights and focus on longer-term, more ambitious goals.
- A single officially sponsored mechanism cannot resolve rectificatory justice claims definitively; a combination of measures is required. Trials and truth commissions target individual perpetrators and victims, whereas a broader response will engage all survivors.
- ‘Reparative justice’ is sensitive to the nature of offences and their impact on victims, offenders and societies. It is also flexible in devising a suitable combination of responses.
- Donors continue to promote growth at all costs, with little attention to distributive effects and the need to redress inequitable pre-conflict situations. They should first redress past economic inequalities before policies of generalised economic growth and development are implemented.
