Historical reconciliation: redress, rights and politics.

• Author: Barkan, Elazar
• Position: FOUNDATIONS

Human rights--as a universal ideology and redress as a specific measure--have been the subjects of increased attention from activists around the globe. Seemingly, the two are in tension with each other: How could rights applicable to a particular people because of wrongs committed against them be held universal? More generally, how are universal rights integrated with group identity, diversity and cultural plurality? In particular, how do local conditions and the agency of the individuals (or the groups) involved, influence the dynamics of rights? This tension is increasingly evident in the way historical injustices and wrongs are addressed in contemporary society, primarily in relation to rights and democracy.

A good illustration of the tension is Northern Uganda, where a dispute is brewing between the International Criminal Court (ICC)--which at the behest of the Ugandan government, indicted the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)--and local groups of the Acholi who prefer to utilize local, traditional reconciliation rituals of their people as a form of conflict resolution. (1) The claim is that the indictment of the LRA leadership, without bringing the perpetrators to justice, only aggravates the conflict and hinders efforts at conflict resolution. (2) The universal considerations conflict with the local conditions, and even norms. The disagreement stems from the claim by the Acholis that the western law as employed by the ICC is not equipped to address the devastation of the conflict or to offer a resolution that will heal old wounds. This claim has two facets: first, the opposing principles of conflicting worldviews; and second, the practical disillusionment at the failure to deliver justice, by whatever standards. Contrary to the Acholi leaders, the Ugandan government is concerned that traditional reconciliation methods to the exclusion of retributive justice will encourage impunity.

Can there be a via media? There are efforts underway in Uganda by civil society to engage traditional leaders and the government to find a way to bring both sides closer together using indirect methods. These include discussions and studies on historical memory and reconciliation to focus not emir on the LRA crimes, but also to the responsibility of the government, to engage a larger number of stakeholders in the process, and to encourage a people-to-people process. The appeal of the tradition stems largely from the breakdown of security and the judicial system on the one hand and from the complex invention of the local tradition on the other. Much has been written about the Mato Oput process of reconciliation--both a process and ritual ceremony to restore relationships between clans in the case of intentional murder or an accidental killing--in an effort to find a solution in line with the traditional process. But as is clear to local leaders as well as the international community, the scope of the crisis is not traditional in any conventional meaning of the term and the system which meant initially to handle property disputes cannot accommodate gross violations of human rights and war crimes--at least not in a traditional manner. Perhaps if adapted to the needs of the stakeholders--primarily the various Acholi representatives, but also the Ugandan government--it might prove more beneficial, but it would not be traditional in the sense of the old days. Instead, it becomes a contemporary traditional--a tradition like never before. (3) The real dilemma is how to imagine a solution that would offer security, reconciliation or justice, let alone all three together. National reconciliation and reinstating justice are obviously desired goals. In Uganda--like in too many other places, because reconciliation and justice seem beyond reach, the call on tradition has stretched its meaning. Yet, it is the sense of continuity of the community which may facilitate new political opportunities. In these, the historical record could provide a bonding space.

A second example comes from Poland. In April 2006, Poland announced that it would charge its last communist leader, General Jaruzelski, over his imposition of martial law in 1981. (4) The charges were brought by the Institute of National Remembrance--Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN), which wits established in 1998 to investigate Nazi and Communist crimes. The IPN is charged with mundane tasks such as preserving documents, providing access and public education. But it also tasked with prosecuting perpetrators of "Crimes Against the Polish Nation." The institute had its most marked impact in its report on Jedwabne--the destruction of a Jewish Community in July 1941, where half of the population of this small eastern European town "murdered the other half--some 1,600 men, women and children." (5) The shock to Poland's public discourse was that this was not done by German troops but by their "neighbors." The IPN's contribution was to turn it from what Polish nationalists and anti-Semites viewed as a partisan history into an official and formal Polish recognition and acknowledgement of the Polish, as distinct from the Nazi, responsibility for the

massacre. The IPN report on Jedwabne points to two approaches to redress: one criminal, the other historical. The historical findings, published in 2002, led to an apology by the Polish president, and marked the official incorporation of the crimes as Polish crimes. (6) The IPN systematically studies the darker chapters of the Polish past. Its work is mostly domestic, but it also collaborates (and struggles) internationally with Russia, the Ukraine and Israel, among others, in constructing a historical narrative that acknowledges the past and provides for reconciliation. The IPN has other programs, the most important of which focus on the Holocaust and its effects on Polish-Jewish relations both past and present, the Stalinist repressions and the martial law after 1981 and Solidarity. It was in this context, that the 82-year old Jaruzelski was indicted.

The examples of Poland and Uganda demonstrate some of the confounding dilemmas of how wrongs and injustices define our notion of the morally right, how universal human rights are integrated with local conditions and agency, and how redress plays a role in society. As the rhetoric of human rights replaces earlier political rhetoric, such as of socialism and anti-colonialism, the focus on redress--which by its very nature is specific and localized--replaces the abstract and universal claims of the earlier ideologies. It thus becomes a tangible goal for social struggles which had earlier been described in universal terms.

FORMS OF REDRESS

Broadly speaking, there are two types of redress: restorative and retributive. Restorative redress is ultimately voluntary, where the parties pursue reconciliation through negotiation. Over the past two decades, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been the most forceful advocate of restorative redress. It includes reparation, restitution of property, restitution of cultural property, historical commissions and apologies as a form of atonement. (7)

The second type of redress is retributive. In contrast to restorative redress, retributive measures are actively enforced, oftentimes by an external party. Some examples of the retributive redress include trials for gross violations of human rights (from Nuremberg to Saddam), international tribunals, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

Truth commissions, in the sense that they include enforcement and voluntary action, fall somewhere between restorative and retributive redress. In addition, vengeance is an extreme form of redress. The possibility that one party will resort to vengeance raises the stakes of redress dramatically and makes it clear that reconciliation is more than an intellectual exercise.

It is important to note that redress is wider than the rapidly growing field of transitional justice. Its goal is broader than the identification of past perpetrators or the discussion of reparation and restitution for immediate victims. Redress also aims to address older historical issues that inform contemporary crises and political tension, including in democracies. For example, it addresses historical injustices towards indigenous peoples who suffer from colonialism and its legacies and those who live in long-standing democracies. A second distinction between transitional justice and redress is that redress explicitly engages the victimization of groups as groups and addresses structural dislocation and suffering as opposed to individual victims and individual repair. The inclusion of redress in established democracies exemplifies the centrality of...