Conclusion: a common objective, a universe of alternatives

Summary

Don't tell us

how to love, don't tell us

how to grieve, or what

to grieve for, or how loss

shouldn't sit down like a gray

bundle of dust in the deepest

pockets of our energy, don't laugh at our belief

that money isn't

everything, don't tell us

how to behave in

anger, in longing, in loss, in home-

sickness, don't tell us,

dear friends.

Mary Oliver

This book set out to explore how communities rebuild themselves after war and mass atrocity, and what contributions, if any, criminal trials make to that process. So, what have we learned?

First, our studies suggest that there is no direct link between criminal trials (international, national, and local/traditional) and reconciliation, although it is possible this could change over time. In fact, we found criminal trials – and especially those of local perpetrators – often divided small multi-ethnic communities by causing further suspicion and fear. Survivors rarely, if ever, connected retributive justice with reconciliation. Reconciliation, in their eyes, was mostly a personal matter to be settled between individuals. When speaking about reconciliation, survivors often spoke of post-war encounters with past friends or colleagues from other ethnic groups, and only occasionally did they speak of reconciliation in the larger, collective sense of involving all members of an ethnic group.

Second, for survivors of ethnic war and genocide the idea of “justice” encompasses more than criminal trials and the ex cathedra pronouncements of foreign judges in The Hague and Arusha.