AMBIGUITIES OF FORGIVENESS IN LEFT TO TELL: DISCOVERING GOD AMIDST THE RWANDAN HOLOCAUST (2006)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider what safeguarding responses to discriminatory abuse and hate crime might learn from existing research on restorative justice and to drive practice development based on available evidence.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a scoping review of literature using four academic databases and reference harvesting. This comprised a critical appraisal of 30 articles, which were thematically analysed to appreciate the benefits and challenges of restorative justice responses to hate crime and how this might inform safeguarding responses to discriminatory abuse and hate crime.FindingsThe analysis identifies four domains where learning can be drawn. These relate to theory on restorative justice; restorative justice practices; perspectives from lived experience of restorative justice and hate crime; and an appraisal of critiques about restorative justice.Originality/valueThis paper connects the emerging evidence on restorative criminal justice responses to hate crime to the “turn” towards strengths-based practices in adult safeguarding. Although this provides a fertile environment for embedding restorative practices, the authors argue certain precautions are required based on evidence from existing research on hate crime and restorative justice.

While writing the foreword for this special edition of the International Journal forthe Semiotics of Law, I was informed of Dr. Nelson R. Mandela’s death. Whilesaddened with his passing, I was struck by the fact, he was one of the two men whomost influenced my study and practice of Restorative Justice; the other was myfather. Both passed away while this edition was compiled and edited.In the mid 1990s, I first read about Restorative Justice as an aspect of the Truthand Reconciliation Commission (‘‘TRC’’) established by Dr. Mandela in post-apartheid South Africa. I was fascinated by his forgiveness of his oppressors andhow he infused the ideals of reconciliation and forgiveness into a court-like hearing.It was an opportunity for the victim of human rights violations to face theperpetrator and tell the perpetrator the extent of the injuries he or she suffered. Afterthe victim spoke, the perpetrator had an opportunity to admit to the wrongdoing,take full responsibility for the harm done and ask for forgiveness. Regardless ofwhether or not forgiveness was bestowed by the victim, the Commission wascharted to grant amnesty to the perpetrator. From a western perspective, the conceptwas at once inconceivable and full of hope. At the time I was a practicing criminaldefense attorney. To use the vernacular, I was hooked.The limited literature at that time indicated Restorative Justice was an effectivetool used to begin the healing process after a specific harm has occurred. Twocommon themes which run through all restorative practices is that it is communitybased and traditionally works in tandem with the justice industry, such as theGacaca Courts (pronounced Ga-cha-cha) in post-genocide Rwanda.

This article explores the various legal responses to the genocide in Rwanda through the lenses of trauma, memory and performance, and addresses thequestion of whether trials as performance and methods of legal recourse including international courts, national prosecutions and traditionally adaptedmechanisms of transitional justice such as the gacaca courts are effective inreconciling trauma and establishing collective memory. This piece argues thatof the available methods of legal redress in post-genocide Rwanda, the gacaca courts are most effective in performing the function of reconciling trauma and establishing collective memory.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Peer mentoring justice-involved youth: a training model to promote secondary desistance and restorative justice among mentors This article introduces a mentoring programme for justice-involved youth that utilises the unique and often overlooked resources offered by adults with a history of incarceration, and the innovative training model that aims to promote secondary desistance and restorative justice among the mentors. An examination of the generative role of peer mentoring and its overlap with restorative justice as a healing process that provides opportunities for offenders to make indirect amends that contribute to the social rehabilitation of their communities is presented. An overview of the history and anticipated aims of mentoring programmes for justice-involved youth is provided, followed by a discussion of the importance of secondary desistance in peer mentoring programmes and a review of the elements, conceptual underpinnings and anticipated benefits of the training programme for the mentors. The training programme is argued to offer approaches that support the primary and secondary desistance-orientated changes and the reparative work needed within the mentor.

Beginning with the premise that our linguistic and cognitive systems are fundamentally metaphorical in nature, this study seeks to explore the predominant metaphor of restorative justice (RJ), the metaphor of healing. Metaphor choice is important, particularly in conflict situations, as they encourage and discourage particular behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions. The conceptualization of RJ as a healing process (where participants heal the wounds caused by offending behaviors) is pervasive and integrated into the academic literature. Perhaps either due to its banality or its seeming beneficiality, we assert that the healing metaphor has not received sufficiently critical reflection. We examined primary metaphor use among RJ facilitators using 319 single-spaced pages of interview data gathered from 20 RJ facilitators. Our results suggest that the healing metaphor is potentially problematic for victims, offenders, and facilitators. We suggest an alternative, garden metaphor, for consideration as an alternative.

In the last two decades following the 1994 genocide, Rwanda has been praised internationally for its strong leadership and revamped governance structures. This has resulted in rapid economic development, restorative justice, homegrown peacebuilding approaches, the tackling of corruption, and restoring security in a country that some analysts had prematurely depicted a hopeless case in state failure. In particular, promotion of women’s rights has become a cornerstone of the Rwandan success story, but few scholars have examined the women who participated in this process and their positive contribution in rebuilding their communities. This article focuses on the role a small group of female leaders at different levels of society played in creating and fostering peacebuilding initiatives over the past two decades. It relies on secondary sources and the author’s observations of several processes in the Rwandan society for more than a decade. It focuses on constructive steps taken in Rwandan society to promote women’s leadership, which sets it apart from many other post-conflict countries while being aware of legitimate critiques of post-genocide Rwandan conditions.

America's plague of incarceration

It is often wrongly believed that the African indigenous knowledge system has no value. Yet prior to colonialism Africa had a strong civilization, which can still be relied on today to secure peace and justice, for example. The aim of this chapter is to uncover the merits of Africa’s indigenous system in post-colonial era. To this end the chapter unpacks the African philosophy of Ubuntu of “togetherness” to demonstrate its relevance for contemporary restorative justice. In its analysis, the chapter relies on the role of Ubuntu in shaping a harmonious and peaceful post-apartheid South Africa and postgenocide Rwanda. It finds out that the notwithstanding some challenges, Ubuntu is a core value that should be relied on in seeking peace and justice in Africa.

Restorative justice, as a viable alternative to retributive justice, emerged in the West during the 1970s and 1980s. It emphasises respect, dialogue, and collaborative decision-making. This study explains the principles of the restorative justice system and describes various Islamic principles and values akin to restorative justice. Such a study is warranted by the fact that the compatibility of restorative justice with Islamic principles and values is under-researched in the social sciences and humanities. This study, based on primary sources and case studies, found that Islam encourages amicable settlement of disputes through mediation and arbitration while ensuring justice, fairness, and equity in all situations. Similar to restorative justice, Islamic principles emphasise respect, honour and dignity, and mutual obligations and responsibilities in righting wrong. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his successors applied these principles, and such a system continues to be practised in certain small villages in contemporary Muslim societies. However, unlike Western restorative justice, Islam places particular emphasis on forgiveness as a value, thus limiting the cycle of retribution and retaliation detrimental to society. Islam considers forgiveness as a great virtue that brings forth gratitude, heals broken relationships, and establishes peace at individual and social levels. Islam aims at constructing a just society which empowers victims, offenders, and the community. Unlike the Western concept of restorative justice, the shariah incorporates elements of restorative justice with a heavy emphasis on forgiveness, with or without an apology.

The epicentre of post-genocide Rwandan society and politics has been the need for reconciliation to assuage ethnic tensions and end a culture of impunity. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has yet to meet its goal of reconciliation in Rwanda: The failure of the tribunal goes beyond its institutional shortcomings and can be attributed the norms of international criminal law that render it an inappropriate response to criminalizing mass violence. The Gacaca courts were resurrected in Rwanda as an indigenous form of restorative justice. The principles and process of these courts hope to mitigate the failures of Arusha Justice at the tribunal and seeks to punish or reintegrate over one hundred thousands genocide suspects. Its restorative foundations require that suspects will be tried and judged by neighbours in their community. However, the revelation that Gacaca is a reconciliatory justice does not preclude its potential for inciting ethnic tension it if purports to serve as an instrument of Tutsi power. The state-imposed approach of command justice has politicised the identity of the participants in Gacaca -- perpetrators remain Hutus and victims and survivors remain Tutsis. Additionally, the refusal of the Kagame government to allow for the prosecution of RPF crimes to be tried in Gacaca courts empowers the notion that Tutsi survival is preconditioned by Tutsi power and impunity. If Gacaca fails to end the perceptions of impunity in post-genocide Rwanda, it will come at a much higher cost for reconciliation than the failure of the ICTR. The relevance of justice after genocide speaks to the appropriateness of retributive and restorative models of justice in a post-genocide society such as Rwanda. Additionally, the model of justice must be reconciled to the nature of a political regime that imposes unity under an ethnocratic minority.

The Therapeutic Role of Forgiveness in Restorative Justice Obinna Paschal Ezeihuoma Abstract The criminal justice system does not currently emphasize the role of forgiveness in the application of justice. Criminal justice procedures and practices have been dominated by the punitive preference of the state, whose interest is traditionally hinged on deterrence, incapacitation, and retributive justice The purpose of this research is to draw upon contemporary empirical data and restorative practices dialogues within criminal justice procedures and other process-based forgiveness interventions models to examine how forgiveness espouse therapeutic outcomes. Current study used content cum secondary analyses and qualitative method to explore the linkages between the idea of restorative justice dialogue and other existing scholarships in other fields of endeavor. The result shows that forgiveness plays a therapeutic role in the emotional and social well-being of individuals and communities that are victimized by crime. By incorporating restorative justice processes in the criminal justice system, a psychotherapeutic pathway is created at the individual level which makes restorative justice a viable alternative to other procedures and practices. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jlcj.v6n1a4

Reviewed by: From Surviving to Living: Voice, Trauma and Witness in Rwandan Women's Writing by Catherine Gilbert Madelaine Hron From Surviving to Living: Voice, Trauma and Witness in Rwandan Women's Writing BY CATHERINE GILBERT Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2018. 294 pp. ISBN 9782367812687 paper. The year 2019 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, and an exciting array of scholarly works have been published in commemoration, including Jean Hatzfeld's Blood Papa: Rwanda's New Generation, Rangira Béa Gallimore's Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda, Nigel Eltringham's Genocide Never Sleeps: Living Law at the International Criminal Tribunal [End Page 257] for Rwanda, Jastine C. Barrett's Child Perpetrators on Trial: Insights from Post-Genocide Rwanda, as well as Nicki Hitchcott and Hannah Grayson's two collections of Stories of Change, one by survivors and the other by scholars. Catherine Gilbert's thought-provoking contribution—an analysis of seventeen testimonial texts by women survivors—is timely and significant given the #metoo movement and nicely complements other monographs published in 2019 on women in wartime, including Sara Brown's Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Rescuers and Perpetrators, Laura Sjoberg and Jessica Peet's Gender and Civilian Victimization in War: Kill the Women First, and Christina Lamb's Our Bodies, Their Battlefields: War Through the Lives of Women. Gilbert's engaging study focuses on Rwandan women's testimonial accounts, a corpus that, as of yet, has been largely dismissed. Gilbert mainly centers her analyses on somewhat familiar Franco-Rwandan authors (e.g., Mukagasana, Mukasonga, Mujawayo, Kayitesi), although she occasionally also alludes to English writers (e.g., Ilibagiza, Nganemariya), lesser known texts (e.g., Musomandera, Gwiza), or Hutu accounts (Umutesi, Mukamunganga, Bagilishya). To develop her arguments, Gilbert draws on trauma theory, Holocaust studies, and critical approaches to testimony/testimonio. Her general approach to these frameworks counters the "impossibility" of witnessing, which Gilbert argues, "derives as much from the audience's inability to hear the story as from the survivors inability to express the trauma" (38). The work's first chapter examines the authenticity and legitimacy of the witness, comparing accounts by direct witnesses, secondary witnesses, and those who saw more or less atrocity and delves into such issues as debt, guilt, and hierarchies of suffering. The second chapter explores trauma, in its sensory and cultural translations, as well as in its temporal manifestations. It also scrutinizes these testimonials' nuanced rhetoric of pain that works to inculpate the international community. The third chapter investigates the role of the "collaborator," or the Western cowriter, interpreter, and intermediary, a subject position that is often overlooked in the transmission of testimonial texts, but one that can critically shape or even change witness testimony by its editing. Particularly thought-provoking are Gilbert's case analyses of contradictory collaborations with Patrick May. Ultimately, Gilbert emphasizes collaboration is a thorny, negotiating "survivor strategy" (163), yet she also suggests that collaboration, as empathetic listening in a reciprocal relationship, can minimize the unspeakable suffering and loneliness of trauma (132–35) and may even offer the survivor some form of healing or liberation (157–58). Gilbert's fourth chapter adds to the overworked theme of silence in witnessing by developing on silence's role as resistance in (post)colonial contexts, as abandonment by the West during the genocide, as well as a form of censure in Rwandan gendered and politico-cultural contexts post-genocide. Focusing on post-genocide reconciliation, confrontations with perpetrators, as well as on women-led communities such as AVEGA or Tubeho, the final chapter further discusses these women writers' complex victim-survivor positions in post-genocide Rwanda, as both remembering and future-oriented, as both individual and collective witnesses, but also as both materially and physically vulnerable. Throughout her study, Gilbert deftly negotiates the promises of testimonial witnessing—as truth-telling, denouncing, documenting, or even as healing—with the fragile real-life conditions of survival in a post-genocide context, as manifested, for instance, by [End Page 258] Berthe Kayitesi's tragic random death at thirty-five in 2015, to whom this work is dedicated. In all, From Surviving to Living is essential reading for...

The study examined ‘the day after’ the #MeToo protest, and proposes channeling the outcry of millions of women toward developing and establishing alternative mechanisms for dealing with sexual offences, focusing on restorative justice conferencing. A mixed-methods design (quantitative and qualitative) was employed to empirically examine the public’s attitude toward the #MeToo movement and restorative-justice in sexual offence cases. The findings (n = 252) revealed that the majority of the public supports the #MeToo movement, but not publications that name alleged offenders. Higher levels of support were found among women and people who define themselves as sexual offence victims. A positive correlation was found between support for the #MeToo movement and support for restorative-justice in sexual offence cases. To better understand the quantitative findings, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 participants. Analysis of the interviews showed that the public acknowledges the importance of the movement, especially due to the widespread discussion on sexual offences and their implications, giving voice to victims, and the possibility that this will help their coping and healing process. Similarly, proponents of restorative justice view the process as an opportunity to conduct a meaningful dialogue, allowing victims to sound their voice and act in a way that suits them.

In this article, the author focuses on victims/survivors' experiences of justice processes after massive trauma. Reparative justice insists that every step throughout the justice experience--from the first moment of the court's encounter with a potential witness, to the follow-up of witnesses after their return home, to the aftermath of the completion of the case--presents an opportunity for redress and healing. Conversely, this experience may present a risk of missing opportunities for healing and reintegrating victims into their societies, or, worse, (re)victimizing and (re)traumatizing them. Although restitution, rehabilitation, or compensation may come only after this process has concluded, opportunities exist throughout. Although not sufficient in itself, reparative justice is a necessary component among the healing processes after massive trauma.