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| ICC Justice Matters Campaign Photo © AP/Reporters/Karel Prinsloo |
As part of
its 10 ten year anniversary, the International Criminal Court has set up a
multimedia exhibit campaign entitled “Justice Matters”. The exhibit uses explicit and graphic photographs
and video clips and its aim is to show that justice matters to the individuals
and communities affected by the crimes under the Court’s jurisdiction and to
show that it matters to the world. This got me thinking about the meaning of
the term justice and whether it meant the same thing to most people, especially those
affected by mass violence or conflict?
According
to the great social scientist and African Scholar Mahmood Mamadani, in his
article entitled “How Shall We Think of Mass Violence: Criminal or Political?
Reflections on Nuremberg and CODESA”, he suggests that notion of justice as
criminal justice has had the effect of being symbolic or performative. This in
his opinion is victors’ justice and has largely shaped our perception of the
term justice when it comes down to mass violence as we know it today. Mamdani
draws attention to the new human rights paradigm which focuses its attention on
individual criminal responsibility for mass atrocities rather than focusing on
the main issues that drive the violence, whether political or otherwise. He
distinguishes between victors justice, victims justice and at last posits a new
framework of justice called survivors justice. In victors justice there is a
clear victor who will emerge as powerful as was the case during the Second
World War ending with Nuremberg. Under
victims justice there is no clear perpetrator as both victim and perpetrator
exchange roles blaming each other during the ongoing conflict, as is often the
case in during civil wars such as in Rwanda where both Hutu and Tutsi blamed
each other, often switching roles of victim and perpetrator. While, with survivors’
justice, victims transition into survivors as a result of political reform,
such was the case in South Africa, with CODESA (Convention for a Democratic
South Africa) where strategic multiparty talks were held and agreement was reached
to end apartheid. Mamdani argues that there can be no single narrative in each given
case and that each case should be determined accordingly.
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| Mahmood Mamdani |
I think we
can learn a lot from Mamdani’s analysis which is a good vantage point to analyse
the processes of justice in each given case. It makes one think out of the
legal box, which is often confining. Similarly, aside from understanding the
driving forces which propel individuals or states into conflicts, we should
also re-evaluate the international justice process as it operates today. Since
we have reduced justice to individual responsibility, as Mamdani puts it,
shouldn’t we make sure that the processes which shape its development are
effective: first to its victims, perpetrators and immediate community and then to
the international community? As Howard Zehr, aptly puts it, “Justice is an act
of liberation” It should work to liberate the victim from the offense and
offender by making the offender feel accountable. In other words, by making him
aware of what he has done to his victims while coming to a true realization of
the harm he or she has inflicted upon another. Zehr holds that the current justice paradigm
only focuses on making sure that guilt is relieved through punishment of the
offender rather than focus on the process as a whole and its outcomes, which in
his view should be that of restoration and healing. Genuine accountability in
Zehr’s words is giving the offender the opportunity to make things right, or to
repair the damage with the victim and society. This cannot happen by only
establishing the guilt of the offender only or by reducing the justice process
to an impersonal adversarial battle where victim and offender are marginalized during
the trial process.
