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Springer Series in Transitional Justice

Jasmina Brankovic
Hugo van der Merwe Editors

Advocating
Transitional
Justice in Africa
The Role of Civil Society
Springer Series in Transitional Justice

Series Editor
Dr. Olivera Simic
Senior Lecturer with the Griffith University Law School
Queensland, Australia

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11233

Jasmina Brankovic • Hugo van der Merwe
Editors

Advocating Transitional
Justice in Africa
The Role of Civil Society
Editors
Jasmina Brankovic Hugo van der Merwe
University of Cape Town Centre for the Study of Violence
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation
and Reconciliation Cape Town, South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa

Springer Series in Transitional Justice

ISBN 978-3-319-70415-9    ISBN 978-3-319-70417-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70417-3

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Foreword

The Long Arc of Transitional Justice

This great volume of written work—Advocating Transitional Justice in Africa: The

Role of Civil Society—does what virtually no other labour of the intellect has done
heretofore. Authored by movement activists and thinkers in the fields of human
rights and transitional justice, the volume wrestles with the complex place and roles
of transitional justice in the project of societal reconstruction in Africa. The authors
are steeped in the theory and practice of transitional justice. Many have toiled in the
vineyards and the tumult of social transformation in the aftermath of conflict. They
thus excavate the hopes and fears of the reformer who seeks a better tomorrow. Even
so, the authors do not take an adulatory approach to transitional justice. They ago-
nise over its shortcomings as they seek to edify its great promises.
Since its inception in the 1990s, transitional justice has been a labour of civil
society. While international institutions today embrace transitional justice—most
principally the United Nations—civil society has been the moving spirit behind its
dogma. In Africa, the loudest voices for transitional justice have come from the
nongovernmental sector. The “eye of the people”—as civil society is known—
became the guardian of transitional justice in Africa. However, as the authors clearly
bear out, Africa was not a tabula rasa on which the concept was reinscribed without
interrogation. To their credit, the contributors demonstrate through case studies the
tortured path that transitional justice has endured in Africa. They point to both con-
ceptual and structural bottlenecks that must be addressed if the framework of tran-
sitional justice is to bear fruit on the continent.
The deficits of transitional justice and its application in Africa echo the argu-
ments of the shortcomings of the human rights discourse and the liberal paradigm
on which it rests. The writers in the volume explicitly and implicitly realise these
shortfalls and point to the need for a dialogic, conceptual and situational canvas on
which transitional justice can become a more effective tool for social transforma-
tion. They decry the one-size-fits-all blueprint advanced by the West. Instead, they
seek a more nuanced and interactive framework informed by local conditions but

v
vi Foreword

anchored in particular unarguable universal standards. They all agree that transi-
tional justice is a project of hope and an indispensable tool in the hands of reform-
ers. Nevertheless, they plead for the complexity of the continent and ask for
rethinking transitional justice to indigenise the concept.
This volume will serve as a timely and thought-provoking guide for activists,
thinkers and policy makers—as well as students of transitional justice—interested
in the tension between the universal and the particular in the arduous struggle for
liberation. Often, civil society actors in Africa have been accused of consuming the
ideas of others, but not producing enough, if any, of their own. This volume makes
clear the spuriousness of this claim and firmly plants an African flag in the field of
ideas. The arc of transitional justice has been long and uneven. Its effectiveness and
success in Africa are the subject of intense debate. I view that debate as a healthy
one. The authors here agree and take that debate a notch higher. None of them is a
naysayer. However, they are all interested in the project of transitional justice as a
key experiment for social recovery.
I recommend this rich volume to all those concerned with the human condition.
In these pages, dedicated and introspective social actors who span the diversity of
religion, region, culture, gender and national origin unite in affirming transitional
justice while at the same time pushing its frontiers. It is a work of enormous vitality
and reach. If transitional justice has a future, then I urge those working and thinking
in it to embrace the lessons offered herein.

Makau Mutua
SUNY Distinguished Professor
Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Scholar
SUNY Buffalo Law School
State University of New York
Buffalo, NY, USA
Editors’ Preface

Transitional Justice as a Field Defined by Practice

Transitional justice is a constantly evolving field of theory and practice. It has been
challenged and contested since its influence began to spread through replication and
the diffusion of global normative frameworks and mechanisms. One key area of
contestation is the relevance of the ideas and tools provided by this field to local
activists and advocates pursuing peace and justice agendas in their local communi-
ties and countries. This collected volume seeks to engage directly with the questions
this raises: How does local civil society pursue transitional justice? How useful do
civil society organisations (CSOs) find the avenues for social change that transi-
tional justice processes provide? And to what extent do they influence them?
The question of civil society’s role in transitional justice does not simply relate
to the relevance of global ideas for local practice. Transitional justice seeks to
respond to local needs. Local traction, victim-centredness and community partici-
pation are all buzz phrases in the field. It is the practice of transitional justice that
will shape our future understanding of the boundaries of the field, its goals, its strat-
egies and its definition.
Whether the field is able to respond to local experiences is however another mat-
ter. Generally it remains dominated by North-based scholars, donors, policy makers
and transitional justice professionals who have instrumentalised and institution-
alised the field in ways that sometimes appear unresponsive to outsider voices. A
key challenge remains the absence of these voices from critical debates and particu-
larly the transitional justice literature. While practitioners speak eloquently at tran-
sitional justice workshops and conferences, they seldom document their experiences
and present their reflections in writing.
The motivation for this book is essentially to address that absence and to high-
light the experiences of local practitioners, largely in their own voices. For us as
editors, it represents an attempt to bridge the gap between our practitioner col-
leagues and our academic colleagues and contribute to correcting the imbalance in
the academic and policy literature.

vii
viii Editors’ Preface

We seek to give greater prominence to a practice-based framing of transitional

justice’s substance and boundaries—its reinvention by local actors grounded in local
struggles who seek to mediate between international ideas and agendas on the one
hand and local needs, politics and visions of justice and peace on the other. Without
this contribution to transitional justice debates, the field will be diminished, as it is
constantly threatened by the growth of a bland standardised technical agenda which
operates too comfortably in the shadow of persistent global inequalities and more
hidden structural injustices.
Transitional justice is a field shaped by civil society. It is an area where academ-
ics have found themselves in the midst of policy debates, where activists have
become policy advisors and international consultants, and where activists, academ-
ics and policy makers have found common ground in developing new ideas and
challenging conventional thinking. The boundaries between advocates, activists,
scholars and politicians have been blurred through the growth and global accep-
tance of transitional justice measures as a norm in transitional contexts.
This fluidity has similarly characterised transitional justice ideas and concepts.
Yet, as transitional justice has become mainstreamed in international institutions and
framed in legal normative prescriptions, it has turned into a somewhat rigid edifice of
ideas, with defined problems and prescribed remedies. While some in civil society
have sought to concretise certain pillars of transitional justice that serve to define the
field, many have broken these down or simply snubbed conventional thinking when
addressing their local challenges. These innovative practices need to be addressed in
the academic literature, particularly from the perspective of African practitioners.

Civil Society and Transitional Justice in Africa

African civil society has been a prominent player in regional and national transi-
tional justice policy debates. A number of African CSOs have played major roles in
shaping their countries’ transitional justice mechanisms. The South African Truth
and Reconciliation Commission, for example, was designed in large part by civil
society through a process of behind-the-scenes policy discussions and big policy
conferences (Boraine et al. 2014). Civil society was also central to finalising the
legislation that established the commission and then in the implementation of its
work (Van der Merwe et al. 1999).
This process of civil society engagement with national transitional justice pro-
cesses has been replicated in many countries on the continent. In some cases the
lack of state capacity meant that CSOs were directly responsible for drafting transi-
tional justice legislation, and in most cases truth commissions and other measures
relied particularly on civil society’s ability to access victims and marginalised com-
munities. This capacity and local legitimacy—built during conflict or in the midst of
ongoing state repression—has given civil society unusual leverage in shaping
­interventions. At the same time it has moulded particular transitional justice agen-
das that often put civil society at odds with the state.
Editors’ Preface ix

Civil society in Africa has also been vocal in relation to the global transitional
justice debates. While sometimes caught between the narrowly framed international
normative approach and national elite politics, CSOs have managed to articulate a
unique approach. They have challenged both international and national policy makers,
pushing for transitional justice processes that resonate with local needs and priorities
and that speak to broad social concerns regarding peace, democratisation and local
conceptions of justice. There are numerous examples of African CSOs that simply
jump on the global transitional justice bandwagon or are cowed by the demands of
authoritarian regimes. But the voices of civil society in dealing with local community
processes, national debates and global arenas provide an encouraging picture of a field
characterised by vibrant intellectual debate and innovative interventions.

Highlighting Practitioner Voices

In this book we have sought to offer local practitioners space to reflect on the devel-
opment and effectiveness of their strategies in promoting transitional justice, to
identify the theoretical and contextual influences on their work and to present les-
sons learnt over two decades of transitional justice interventions on the continent.
Given our years of experience working with practitioners on documenting their
experiences and ideas, we realised that this endeavour would be a challenge. While
practitioners are more than capable of documenting their experiences, engaging in criti-
cal self-reflection and participating actively in theoretical discussions of transitional
justice challenges, they do not prioritise writing in their day-to-day work. Our efforts to
solicit inputs from our network of colleagues across the continent produced numerous
rich inputs, but finding time to revise and edit work within the timeframe of an edited
volume meant that many of these inputs could not be included in the book. We remain
grateful to those practitioners who participated in the workshops and exchanges, which
enriched the reflections and insights that inform the ideas shared in this volume.
Rather than just rely on practitioners’ inputs on civil society, we decided to
broaden our circle of contributors and invite other researchers who have extensive
experience working in collaboration with African CSOs and local academics who
have done serious empirical work on these issues. We also sought to address par-
ticular gaps that we identified in the collection, such as issues of gender and the role
of regional mechanisms. Again, our efforts were only partially successful.
This volume was born out of many years of engagement among a range of CSOs
on the African continent, which have collaborated on joint advocacy projects,
engaged in knowledge exchange and helped to build mutual capacity to pursue tran-
sitional justice initiatives in their local contexts and through regional bodies such as
the African Union. Both the editors of this volume, Jasmina Brankovic and Hugo
van der Merwe, work with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation
(CSVR), which has been one of the central partners in these collaborations. The
joint initiatives were developed through the African Transitional Justice Research
x Editors’ Preface

Network (ATJRN),1 which brought together key CSOs and African researchers and
practitioners to share knowledge and coordinate advocacy efforts.
ATJRN regularly highlighted the need to document local CSO experiences, to
facilitate critical reflection and to build local conceptualisations of transitional jus-
tice. These engagements led to the establishment of peer review processes among
partners (Mncwabe 2011), the establishment of an Institute for African Transitional
Justice (convened by the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University), facilitated
writing retreats and capacity building among partners to contribute to international
advocacy and scholarly platforms (e.g. through the International Journal of
Transitional Justice, which is managed by CSVR).
A key link between these various forums and this book is a 2010 workshop
hosted by CSVR under the auspices of ATJRN: “Advocating Justice: Civil Society
and Transitional Justice in Africa”. This workshop brought together 18 transitional
justice practitioners from across the continent to share their experiences of pursuing
transitional justice processes in their respective countries. It produced rich case
studies,2 a workshop report (Brankovic 2010) and a wealth of information that
inspired us to explore other channels to make sure that these types of perspectives
are more effectively captured and disseminated in academic circles.

Framing an African Approach to Transitional Justice

Transitional justice is fundamentally about both the politics of justice and the cultural
conceptions of justice. Writing about the African continent addresses a unique subset
of cases that differ from how transitional justice is conceived and pursued in other
regions. Africa has been a particularly prominent subject of the field in the last two
decades. This is the result of a confluence of factors, such as the political shifts and
democratisation following the end of the Cold War, the regional influence of the South
African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s reputation, and the prominence of
international bodies which have promoted transitional justice through their interven-
tions across the continent. In many of these situations, transitional justice is presented
as an externally defined idea. While local actors often see the relevance of the promises
made relating to justice, reconciliation and accountability, the practice of transitional
justice tends to be presented as the implementation of predesigned templates. This
power differential between transitional justice proponents and local “consumers” has
become one of the defining features of the African experience of transitional justice.

1
The African Transitional Justice Research Network Steering Committee consisted of representa-
tives from CSVR (South Africa), the Refugee Law Project (Uganda), the Campaign for Good
Governance (Sierra Leone), the Center for Democratic Development (Ghana) and the Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights (Zimbabwe).
2
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, “Advocating Justice: Civil Society and
Transitional Justice in Africa”, http://www.csvr.org.za/publications/latest-publications/2724-advo-
cating-justice-civil-society-and-transitional-justice-in-africa2 (Accessed 26 July 2017).
Editors’ Preface xi

Civil society has played a key role in reversing this power dynamic, particularly by
formulating local transitional justice agendas and partnering with each other to promote
more locally responsive approaches, and more recently by working with the African
Union on the development of an African Union Transitional Justice Policy. In a similar
vein, civil society has worked closely with the African Commission on Human and
Peoples’ Rights to develop a strategy for engagement with transitional justice. Rather
than rejecting transitional justice as yet another externally imposed agenda, African
institutions are articulating their own values and norms that draw on African human
rights frameworks and reflections on national experiences within the continent.
While there may be some danger of creating a new generic model that presents a
regional rather than a global template, this critical psychological and political shift
means that transitional justice is seen as something that can be redefined and repur-
posed for a different agenda. This volume seeks to feed into African transitional jus-
tice ownership by providing an up-to-date regional perspective on the field. The
chapters speak to the specific local contexts that need to be negotiated by practitioners
and provide considerable pause to those who would impose generic frameworks.

The Breadth and Limitations of the Case Studies

Transitional justice in Africa is complex and multifaceted. In response, this volume

covers a wide range of regions and initiatives. The contributions have broad geo-
graphic scope, including case studies from Southern Africa (Zimbabwe and South
Africa), Central Africa (Burundi), East Africa (Kenya and Uganda), North Africa
(Libya, Egypt and Tunisia) and West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone). They discuss
very different forms of conflict, political cultures and historical periods of transition
and cover different spurs to transition (negotiated agreement, military victory), stages
of political transition (nascent to long past, along with cases of non-­transition) and
forms of repression and violation (structural injustices, dictatorial regimes, civil war).
Even so, the book has some biases. The chapters focus mainly on nongovern-
mental organisations (NGOs), paying less attention to community-based organisa-
tions, ethnic and religious formations, and popular movements. Some chapters
provide a more integrated picture through an analysis of the range of CSO actors
involved in collaborative initiatives, and several problematise the role of urban-­
based professional NGOs. The chapters also focus largely on state-oriented efforts.
While many contributors engage with alternative transitional justice initiatives and
community-based interventions, the overall orientation is to explore how CSOs
navigate their relationship with the state. Given the inadequacy of many state
responses, African CSOs have undertaken extensive initiatives themselves to docu-
ment abuses, memorialise the past, facilitate healing and reconciliation and promote
accountability. To address effectively this range of efforts and the complexity of
engaging in these roles would require a whole new volume.
The contributions nonetheless analyse and evaluate a broad span of civil society
efforts. These include bridging peacebuilding and transitional justice efforts; agenda
xii Editors’ Preface

setting through public consultation processes; popularisation of transitional justice

ideas and goals; working with victims and victims’ groups to advocate for account-
ability, truth and reconciliation; monitoring state interventions; and providing assis-
tance to the state in establishing and facilitating truth commissions and other
mechanisms. They further include elaborating traditional and community-based
measures; highlighting socio-economic inequality and historical injustices; lobby-
ing for the implementation of recommendations that emerge from transitional jus-
tice measures; and pursuing international litigation. Civil society is shown to play a
wide range of roles in these initiatives, including the provision of expertise, the
facilitation of public participation, outreach to victims and affected communities,
coalition and network building, and the contribution of mediation, legal, psychoso-
cial and other support, among others.
The chapters underline that civil society evolves over time and in response to
changes in global, regional and national contexts. In evaluating transitional justice
efforts (in some cases their own), the contributors offer insights into the challenges fac-
ing civil society—including within organisations and coalitions themselves—and some
suggestions for how to address these challenges. The book begins by framing the case
studies in terms of transitional justice and civil society theory and ends by highlighting
the centrality of local politics and history to civil society practice on the continent.

Overview of Chapters and Ideas

In the introductory chapter, Jasmina Brankovic examines ways in which civil society
theory affects practitioners’ approaches to transitional justice in Africa. Brankovic
outlines the intersections of mainstream and alternative conceptions of civil society
and transitional justice, given their parallel rise in the post-Cold War context. Through
a close reading of the case studies, she explores the main tensions that characterise
these intersections, namely, the validity of positioning (human rights) NGOs as the
most legitimate form of civil society, the significance of associational life based on
sectarian ties, the role of “uncivil” collective action and the marginalisation of vari-
ous local, regional and global dynamics with the centring of the state implied by the
state–civil society binary. Brankovic suggests that the practice of transitional justice
on the continent is constrained by mainstream conceptions of civil society.
Turning the book’s focus to civil society strategies, Andrew Songa analyses the role
of the Kenya Transitional Justice Network (KTJN) in shaping Kenya’s transitional jus-
tice agenda in the context of democratisation. After discussing the dynamics and evolu-
tion of Kenyan civil society since independence, Songa zeroes in on KTJN’s engagement
with the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, namely, advocating for its
establishment, playing both an advisory and a watchdog role during the commission’s
tenure and then following up on its recommendations. Evaluating KTJN’s agenda devel-
opment and the effectiveness of its strategies, the chapter suggests critical lessons in
terms of substantive issues such as ensuring victim participation and promoting gender
justice, as well as operational issues such as governance structures and sustainability.
Editors’ Preface xiii

Placing advocacy for a responsive truth commission in a broad frame, James

Dhizaala discusses how local civil society in Liberia and the diaspora influenced
transitional justice efforts in the wake of the country’s 14-year civil war. Dhizaala
examines the evolution of civil society during and after the conflict, particularly the
role of human rights, faith-based, professional, women’s and other diverse organ-
isations in securing Liberia’s peace agreement and negotiating seats for civil society
representatives in the transitional government. He analyses civil society challenges
in designing and implementing the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
and suggests lessons for long-term thinking around transition in postconflict
contexts.
Shastry Njeru provides an overview of transitional justice efforts in a very differ-
ent context—where no political transition has occurred. Njeru discusses the
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum’s outreach and sensitisation programme,
Taking Transitional Justice to the People, and the challenges of implementing it in
a constrained political environment. Outlining strategies for holding workshops and
trainings on transitional justice in Zimbabwe’s highly politicised rural areas, he
evaluates the programme’s focus on the “pillars” of transitional justice—truth seek-
ing, prosecutions, reparations, institutional reform and memorialisation—and high-
lights the need for more participatory methods in the design and implementation of
outreach programmes, among other lessons learnt.
Continuing with the theme of participation, Zukiswa Puwana and Rita Kesselring’s
chapter focuses on the advocacy and internal dynamics of the membership-­based
organisation of apartheid survivors, the Khulumani Support Group. Puwana and
Kesselring argue that in response to the sidelining of victims, Khulumani has taken a
confrontational approach to addressing the “unfinished business” of apartheid and the
South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 20 years since the transi-
tion to democracy. The chapter discusses a range of Khulumani strategies, including
its development of a national victim database, lawsuit against apartheid-abetting cor-
porations via the United States Alien Tort Statute, collaborations (at times conflictual)
with NGOs and academics, and grassroots mobilisation and capacity building. Puwana
and Kesselring examine the challenges these strategies have elicited and their impact
on survivor solidarity, highlighting the need for early victim participation in transi-
tional justice agenda setting and discussing the compromises involved in choosing
legal strategies over political ones.
In her chapter on Burundi, Wendy Lambourne discusses cooperation and contes-
tation among civil society actors—international and local, in the country and in
exile—in a postconflict context where control over transitional justice processes has
been asserted in different ways by the state (and by the United Nations). Lambourne
analyses civil society’s strategies of cooperation and resistance, where support for
governmental initiatives through a focus on healing, reconciliation and sensitisation
regarding the Burundian Truth and Reconciliation Commission is combined with
dissent through advocacy for accountability and prosecutions. Her analysis of the
work of the Reflection Group on Transitional Justice and the Quaker Peace Network
Burundi, two very different groups, indicates how civil society strategies develop in
response to shifting opportunities in politically constrained contexts.
xiv Editors’ Preface

Looking at a similarly constraining context, where the state deliberately deploys

ineffective transitional justice processes in the absence of political transition, Joanna R.
Quinn considers the evolving advocacy of local and international NGOs in Uganda.
She notes that civil society has largely moved away from “peace and justice” work,
including the customary justice efforts that were the most visible form of transitional
justice in the country. In addition to the government’s success in shifting civil society
and donor attention away from northern Uganda and past violations, Lambourne
locates the reason for this move in personnel turnover and lack of institutional mem-
ory in organisations, as well as a degree of state co-­optation and dearth of innovative
approaches within civil society. She argues that communities to a large extent have
been left on their own to deal with the events of the past.
Andrew Iliff takes a wider view of engagement between communities and civil
society in Africa, examining community-based transitional justice processes that he
argues can serve as complements or as alternatives to state-run processes. Iliff notes
that community-based initiatives may better reflect the agency of survivors and
unravel the complexities of local power dynamics at the root of conflicts. He dem-
onstrates that the urban-based NGOs that largely shape transitional justice on the
continent need to engage constructively and thoughtfully with local culture and
power dynamics in order to provide effective and responsive interventions.
Underlining the density of local authority structures and the turn to ideas of “tradi-
tion” and associated canons of practice as central to community-based processes,
Iliff draws lessons from the cases of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative in
Uganda, the Peace Building Network of Zimbabwe and Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone.
Noha Aboueldahab also takes a wide view and shifts the book’s focus to North Africa
and prosecution efforts linked to the Arab Spring. Discussing diverse civil society actors
and the similarities and differences between the contexts of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya,
she examines three strategies used before, during and immediately after the political
transition in each country: documenting human rights abuses, pursuing litigation despite
politicised and weak judiciaries, and emphasising economic crimes, corruption and the
connection between civil-political and socio-­economic rights abuses. Aboueldahab
demonstrates the importance of consistent civil society action and mobilisation in coun-
tries where transition appears a distant hope and where regime change may not bring
about the political and social transformation it promises.
In the concluding chapter to the volume, Hugo van der Merwe reflects on the
position of civil society in African transitional justice debates. He examines the
complexity of transitional justice in contexts where colonial exploitation has left a
legacy that frames the underlying politics of transition and complicates debates
between local and international actors. He draws on the various contributions to the
volume to unpack the challenges facing civil society in finding an independent voice
that steers between a restrictive global normative discourse and deeply divided
national political dynamics, in order to highlight the critical role that African CSOs
play in shaping transitional justice locally and also globally.
The case studies in this book illuminate common struggles: the search for peace
and security by those most directly impacted by war, the quest to rebuild communities
riven by conflict, the demand for the state to take responsibility for its failures and
Editors’ Preface xv

account for its misdeeds, and the struggle for a more just society that deals with
inequality and oppression across many social dimensions, including gender. While
the contributors offer some lessons they have learnt, drawing out recommendations
for transitional justice practice from this complex landscape and painful struggle
would seem somewhat trite. What the chapters in fact highlight is the need for con-
stant critical reflection and for innovation. While drawing on international inspiration,
and norms and mechanisms that tilt the power balance in critical ways, transitional
justice is a field that requires localised solutions. African civil society is an important
resource, bringing together as it does a global knowledge base and a localised aware-
ness of resources, needs and priorities.

Cape Town, South Africa Jasmina Brankovic

Hugo van der Merwe

References

Boraine, A., Levy, J., & Scheffer, R. (Eds.). (1994). The healing of a nation? Cape Town: Justice
in Transition.
Brankovic, J. (2010). Advocating justice: Civil society and transitional justice in Africa. Cape
Town: African Transitional Justice Research Network and Centre for the Study of Violence
and Reconciliation.
Mncwabe, N. (2010). African transitional justice research network: Critical reflections on a peer
learning process. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 4(3), 497–508.
Van der Merwe, H., & Schkolne, M. (2017). The role of local civil society in transitional justice.
In C. Lawther & L. Moffett (Eds.), Research handbook on transitional justice. Edward Elgar:
Cheltenham.
Van der Merwe, H., Dewhirst, P., & Hamber, B. (1999). Non-governmental organizations and the
truth and reconciliation commission: An impact assessment. Politikon: South African Journal
of Political Studies, 26(1), 55–79.
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