YASN Conference - ‘Transitions’ from what to what? Justice and Reconciliation in Africa

The conference aims to subject to scrutiny the realms of criminal justice, social justice and reconciliation in Africa. This is not envisaged as a narrow field; the conference is designed to include all elements of international criminal justice, truth and reconciliation commissions, localised notions of retributive, restorative and redistributive justice, and ideas of social justice linked to themes as broad as poverty, gender, land and societal cleavages. The conference, however, aims also to interrogate the notion of ‘transition’. Often applied to societies deemed in need of change, the important questions of what is envisaged and what actually happens are accompanied by an even more fundamental uncertainty as to whether ‘transition’ is indeed an appropriate term for these processes.

Programme

10.15
Registration

10.50
Introduction

11.00
Session 1: Post-conflict Justice and Reconciliation

From Apartheid to Democracy - without a Truth & Reconciliation Commission: has the experience of Namibia worked?
Peter Nias, Former Honorary Visiting Research Fellow, University of Bradford

The Special Court for Sierra Leone: a Peacebuilding Mechanism?
Adikalie Kamara, University of Bradford

Post-genocide Memory as the Aegis of Atrocity
Chris Davey, University of Bradford

12.30
Lunch break

13.15
Session 2: Justice Systems

Justice in security matters – mapping non-state actors and security demands in Khayelitsha, South Africa
Vera Riffler, University of York

Rule of whose law? Justice systems under ‘transitional government’ collapse in Juba, South Sudan
Dr Nicki Kindersley, University of Durham

To fear or embrace the ‘global policeman’: the representation of the US military ‘African Pivot’
Dr Chris Paterson, University of Leeds

15.00
Session 3: Guest Speaker
Dr Phil Clark, SOAS, University of London

16.20
Closing remarks