Negotiating Restorative and Retributive Justice in Access to Justice for Survivors of Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Post-conflict Northern Uganda

Abstract

This paper is based on research carried out in Northern Uganda on the negotiation between retributive and restorative justice in conflict transformation. The findings show that in the daily lives of survivors of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) in post-conflict northern Uganda, retributive and restorative justice systems are not used as mutually exclusive mechanisms for seeking justice. Rather, they are constantly negotiated. Children and other stakeholders in post-conflict settings pragmatically choose to apply aspects of each justice system to serve their own goals. In the real life experience of these survivors and their families, the two systems are interconnected and interdependent. Their boundaries, therefore, seem to be porous; “places of meeting and exchange rather than walls of protection against each other”(Jordan J, Hartling L, New developments in relational-cultural theory. In: Ballou M, Brown L(eds) Rethinking mental health and disorder. Guilford Press, New York, 2002: 8). In the daily lives of children and their caretakers in post-conflict settings, it is a fallacy to imagine that retributive and restorative justice systems are working independent of each other. In other words, when each system operates independent of the other, it becomes incomplete as an explanatory model for justice in the context of the survivors and their families. This chapter demonstrates how people, especially survivors of SGBV and their families in Northern Uganda, negotiate between retributive and restorative justice in an effort to access justice. This chapter further explores whether an ingenious hybrid of retributive and restorative justice can creatively contribute to the achievement of justice for the survivors and their families. It also explores the extent to which the process of negotiating between the two justice systems may create space for impunity. The chapter concludes that although nurturing a hybrid justice system creates opportunities for participation and ownership of processes and outcomes by the victims/survivors and perpetrators of atrocities and their families, care must be taken to ensure that the best interests of the survivors and their rights are not compromised.