Despite the efforts of local people, life is still dominated by an overall lack of even basic needs: no roads, no transportation, no new sources of income, no schools, and not even drinking water. Because many people live out of the lack of access for vehicles, many people are forced to hike up to two days for services and collect drinking water and fire wood by foot, having to cover several kilometres a day. Schools in particular are suffering severely under these conditions: Mud floors, lacking windows, blackboards, shabby furniture and hair-raising hygienic conditions are common. General healthcare is as problematic, due to a the lack of a hospital, which is substituted for by only few health centres run by mostly unqualified staff, chronically underequipped, and far from accessible.

Amidst this chaos, families as the nuclear cell of society are under constant threat. A visit to one of the local families reveals the widening gaps: The father suffers from tuberculosis, has to walk a whole day and travel by bus another one to get to the only TB-hospital in Nepal, while his son is not able to help him since he moved to Saudi Arabia as a labourer. This fate is typical for young people in the rural areas, most of whom leave the country and take on low-paid jobs in India or the Middle East, seeing no future for themselves in Nepal. There is now a widespread fear of society losing a whole generation of young people. On the other hand, and in defiance of reality, political parties – and most of all the CPN-M – keep trying to raise expectations about the future.

Socially, the district is caught up in both unresolved issues and a longstanding culture of violence which evolved from the years of internal armed conflict. The former is manifest in widespread gender- and caste discrimination, with low caste people being banned from using the same wells as higher class members. But even more obvious are the deep wounds left by the war, suddenly erupting as violent clashes among villagers, even over seemingly trivial issues.

However, there is a thin ray of hope for better life in the villages. Since the signing of the peace agreement, a number of dedicated civil society- and community based organisations has been working on mitigating the climate of despair and violence. Their efforts are channelled through discussion and interaction programmes, awareness campaigns, workshops and trainings for villagers on peace, non-violence, dialogue, facilitation, mediation and negotiation, as well as the essential task of bridging the gap between state authorities and conflict victims. In addition, these activists are working on identifying the primary victims of the decade-long violent struggles and their actual needs for a return to a normal life.

In accordance with this “movement”, the people of Belghari Village Development Committee (VDC) took part in a one-day peace and human rights workshop, peacefully solving a Community Based Organsation (CBO) conflict concerning a financial transparency issue,, while workshop participants are now involved in creating awareness for issues of conflict and peace among their neighbours and family members.

In a similar manner, school teachers in Sindhuli district were provided with training on conflict, peace and human rights. As a result, 29 teachers have been actively solving problems and calling people’s attention to peace and human rights in their respected areas. In particular, they have been addressing the issue of caste discrimination, irrigation and pressing local issues.

These teachers were then enabled to train a number of students on human rights and peaceful methods of conflict resolution like mediation and negation, who were in turn able to reach out to their friends, to villagers and family members.

Although evidence of the peace activities’ anticipated effects is still rare, it is clearly noticeable that a majority of the villagers have rejected violence as a means for resolving disputes and conflicts. Moreover, people have started talking about peace and human rights – It seems like the long established culture of violence is gradually and slowly replaced by an emerging culture of peace, which, above all, calls for a sustainable and long term engagement.

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According to Stephen, “the quintessence of transitional justice is the balancing of the immediate need to secure peace with longer term imperatives of establishing the rule of law, good governance and preventing future conflicts.” It includes short, medium and long term local, regional, and international programmes that seek cessation of hostilities or repressive rule; address the root causes of violent conflicts, promote sustainable peace, reconciliation and justice; and nurture the rule of law in the affected societies. If comprehensively implemented and fully embraced by the population, transitional justice mechanisms like institutional reforms, prosecutions of heinous crimes, truth seeking and acknowledgement for past abuses, reparations to victims, memorialisation or memorials and traditional rituals for reconciliations have potential to achieve closure to past abuses, catharsis healing and kick-start the long process needed for local grassroots, inter-communal reconciliation and nation building.

According to ATJRN, the objective of the workshop was to bring together practitioners and scholars in order to share experiences and evaluate African civil society’s engagement with transitional justice (TJ) on the continent. It was intended to encourage individuals and organisations working on issues of peace, justice and reconciliation in Africa to document their experiences and advocacy efforts relating to influencing governments’ TJ policies before, during and after transition. Participants came from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia and the host country – South Africa. The organisations represented were Refugee Law Project (RLP) and FIDA from Uganda; Fambul Tok International from Sierra Leone; Centre for Democratic Governance from Liberia; National Victims Network and International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) from Kenya; Penal Reform International from Rwanda; Congolese Coalition for Transitional Justice from DRC; Lawyers for Human Rights from Zimbabwe; and Khulumani Support Group, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) from South Africa.

The two day discussions explored the important roles civil society has played in catalysing development of transitional justice discourses in their very complex and challenging contexts. Civil Society groups have innovated proactive and sometimes reactive advocacy strategies to engage the victims of conflicts, their populations and governments to implement credible, appropriate and comprehensive mechanisms to deal with the legacies of large scale past human rights abuses. These strategies include civil society leading the process of designing and drafting transitional justice laws and policy frameworks, mobilising victims, consultations with key stakeholders and litigations among others. The formation of coalitions and coordinated civil society advocacy was identified as crucial for success but a lot of challenges were identified in their sustainability and staying the course. Funding politics and lack of capacity was repeatedly raised by the participants as an inhibiting factor. Many civil society organisations also work in very repressive environments making it extremely difficult to engage with governments that are often none responsive and less interested in the plight of victims.

It was humbling enough but also very inspiring to listen to stories of enormous successes accorded by some of the local civil society organisations under extremely difficult circumstances. The realisation of sustainable peace on the African continent largely depends on the achievement of equal dispensation of justice and access to opportunities. Civil societies are key agents in this pursuit but they still face a lot of challenges in their contexts. There is need for both state and non state actors to engage with civil society members and affected populations to facilitate implementation of appropriate transitional justice mechanisms relevant to each context. The African Union (AU) was noted to be increasingly taking its place in the fight for peace, justice and reconciliation on the continent and civil society was called upon to engage with the AU to adopt a comprehensive transitional justice policy framework: allowing for engagement with civil society and galvanising verifiable political will and commitment to deal with large scale human rights abuses.

The ATJRN seeks to promote and encourage transitional justice research in Africa through the development of research capacity, the building of transitional justice content knowledge, and the creation of spaces for practitioners and researchers in Africa to share experiences, expertise, and lessons learned. Established in 2004 by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (South Africa), Refugee Law Project (Uganda), Campaign for Good Governance (Sierra Leone) and the Centre for Democratic Development (Ghana), ATJRN strives to ensure that the transitional justice agenda in Africa is locally informed and owned.

Stephen Oola, Local Correspondent Uganda

The full text of Stephen Oola’s presentation at the workshop can be read here (pdf) >>>

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