Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Global Governance and Human Security

First Advisor

Rita Kiki Edozie

Second Advisor

Darren Kew

Third Advisor

Karen Ross, Godwin Murunga

Abstract

The end of the Second World War established the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo tribunal while the United Nations (UN) system established ad-hoc tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and multilateralism facilitated the creation of the present-day International Criminal Court (ICC). These trials and tribunals established liberal approaches to transnational justice governance. Despite the dominance of a liberal universalist justice framework, non-liberal justice approaches have also emerged. Considered as alternative customized justice structures, including South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, these community emergent approaches emphasize a transformative approach to addressing legacies of civil conflict and war. Key to these customized justice processes are survivors whose agency in universal transnational justice adjudication models has not been adequately acknowledged. Within these models, a role for survivors is critical in addressing systemic social conflict challenges and achieving greater survivor participation using more expansive grassroots mechanisms. Motivated by these trends in customized transformative justice approaches, this dissertation study reveals how the agency of survivors espoused by justice frameworks from the Global South is significantly missing in the global governance of transnational justice. Using the Ugandan post Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) conflict era and experiences as a case study, the current dissertation compares the agency of survivors of atrocities as they are presented by liberal internationalist justice governance frameworks as well as by the emerging customized justice frameworks through three perspectives: (a) the process through which they deliver justice, (b) the justice results of those approaches, and (c) the contributions they make to the global governance of transnational justice. The dissertation’s distinctive research questions rely on postcolonial international relations and Third World Approaches to International Law theoretical framework to examine the critical role that African justice governors and survivors of conflict in the continent play in customizing Western transnational justice to the unique contexts of their transitioning postcolonial states and societies. To support the dissertation’s research objective, the study applies qualitative multi-methods, including on-site, in-country field and archival research to three judicial or extra-judicial case studies of transnational justice adjudication processes emerging from the LRA conflict in Uganda. The first case is the Dominic Ongwen versus The Office of the Prosecutor, adjudicated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The second case is the Thomas Kwoyelo versus the Government of Uganda under the auspices of Uganda’s International Crimes Division (ICD) of the High Court. The third case draws from community level alternative justice process of reconciliation and reintegration based on the Acholi tradition of Mato-Oput. The research emanating from this dissertation reveals a main finding supporting the study’s thesis that a liberal teleology of transnational justice used by the ICC and Uganda’s government (ICD) represent top-down approaches, and they are mostly conducted indirectly through intermediaries. These two approaches engage survivors as objects of the justice processes in ways that limit their contributions to the governance of justice. On the other hand, the local, customized approaches, such as the Mato-Oput, bring survivors back to the center of justice and make them the subjects of an inclusive restorative justice process. To this end, the dissertation concludes that customized justice models may reflect the expectations of local communities in post-conflict transition since they bear their survivors’ vision of justice and allow for their full exercise of agency.

Comments

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