ABSTRACT
The concept of peacebuilding owes its origin to Johann Galtung who drew the distinction between peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding - all three now commonplace terms in United Nations (UN) vocabulary and practice. Recent events in South Africa, Bosnia and Rwanda have focused public attention on the question of the application of justice for crimes perpetrated during conflict. This chapter identifies three distinct but interdependent dimensions of justice which are usually pertinent and pressing in the aftermath of conflict: legal justice, rectificatory justice, and distributive justice. 'The rule of law' has been portrayed variously as a political ideal and a legal institution; as the centrepiece of any viable political system, and as inimical to democracy; as a current reality and a distant aspiration. In the maximalist view, the rule of law is more than mere rule by law, and requires more than a mechanistic series of structures and procedures for its realization.
