ABSTRACT
Even within the legal framework, an exclusive focus on retributive forms of justice with its emphasis on punitive outcomes, at the expense of more restorative forms which emphasise the establishment or restoration of relationship between the victim and victimiser is problematic. Arguably, the retributive form relies on the knowledge and expertise of elite legal authorities who define and determine the meanings, processes and outcomes of quests for truth and justice in the transition out of political violence. Similarly, human rights discourses, not only seem unable to establish in international and local law victims’ formal rights to justice, and punishment of perpetrators or reparation, but also tend to favour punitive rather than restorative judgements for perpetrators, especially in the international domain. Together these attributes create conditions in which (re)negotiation of concepts such as truth and justice is restricted to a qualified (rather than an elite) community of victims, perpetrators, their proxies and legal representatives, leaving civil society, the media and other societal institutions in the role of bystanders and commentators, as if they did not have a substantial stake in such (re)negotiation.
