ABSTRACT
An important challenge of peacebuilding lies in a period of transitional justice where nations are trying to respond to past evils. The objective of transitional justice is to confront the legacies of human rights abuse and human suffering, to ensure accountability for the past injustices while maintaining peace, the rule of law, democratic processes and the need for reconciliation. This chapter examines the role of memory and truth in dealing with the past. Choices about what is remembered and forgotten, and stories told truthfully and those covered over or suppressed, have massive moral implications for individuals, groups, communities and politicians and influence the direction in which a country moves. While we cannot change the past, we have choices in how to remember it, talk about it and deal with it. ‘History is not memory, but divergent re-rememberings, shaped in culturally specific ways’ (Cockburn 2004: 89). Collective memory of the past is, in many ways, a social construction, handed down generationally or acquired through marriage or political indoctrination. Different accounts of the same historical narrative differ according to politics, religion, age, class, peer influence or personal bias. If we can choose what aspects of collective memory to accept, question, contest or deny, we can also make choices about different alternatives in how to deal with the past. Choice is the hallmark of moral agency. A challenge for peacebuilders is to foster the healing process in victims who become empowered as survivors, agents of choice. The past I am referring to is one that has been ridden with conflict, tragedy and human pain. In particular, I refer to past evils.
