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I enjoyed this article because it explored election outcomes and violence, specifically in Kenya. I was shocked to read that as a result of the Kenyan civil war '1,110 and 1,200' (Vereni, 2016) were dead.

I enjoyed the style of the article it was written in a way which was clear, but also emphasised key aspects. It was interesting that it focused largely on Moreno-Ocampo who became known as 'The World's Prosecutor' (Vereni, 2016), who was the Chief Prosecutor at the I.C.C. (International Criminal Court) which is based in the Netherlands. Initially, I thought that this was an extension of Western powers  similar to the extension of Western powers with the Refugee Convention.

However, it was interesting to see that the 'majority of Kenyans approved of the I.C.C.’s intervention' (Vereni, 2016) and the iconography of Moreno-Ocampo. However, this support rapidly declined where Moreno-Ocampo was accused of 'political tone-deafness' (Vereni, 2016).

Ultimately, my question remains how best it is to deal with civil disputes within countries? Also, if it is best to be left to the individual country - rather than the I.C.C. intervening?

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The necessity for alternative means of serving justice is clear and yet provides a very promising and potentially more effective method than the dense bureaucratic channels in the west.

"With exceptions, few low-level ‘victim-perpetrators’ will ever face trial; their numbers are great and overwhelming, and rarely reach a threshold of responsibility considered worthy of trial." (412)

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"Time and again I listened to
ordinary Acholi describe abducted children and youths as persons they considered responsible for their suffering (although an equal number proclaimed their innocence)."  (425)

I thought this quote was really interesting as it mirrors the issue with trying to show how guilty and innocent people are within any sort of justice. The problem seems universal.

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I found interesting how Baines juxtaposed the formal and informal institutions of Uganda in the post-conflict setting. “In conflict of post-conflict settings, cleansing ceremonies have sometimes been adapted to create ‘symbolic closure on the past’” (Baines 2010: 429) I could relate to this idea a lot; formal institutions of justice and law are often maybe too rigid to comprehend the wider socio-cultural structures that complicate a conflict and violent area, whereby ceremonies and invoking spirits may assist to begin overcome the guilt, pain, loss and fear that one may experience.

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Responding to Aneurin:

I too thought of similar questions when reading the article. “Kenyatta, now Kenya’s president, not only denied the charges against him but also called the I.C.C. ‘the toy of declining imperial powers.’” Is foreign intervention always the best solution? If the accusations were right and Kenyatta was in fact responsible for the horrific violence after elections 2007 - how can a intra conflict/violence like this be solved when the leader is instigating it?

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I enjoyed this article because it shows the complexity of analysing a post-conflict environment, thus needing to keep in mind both the personal and the community-based efforts that aim to return to a type of normality. I wonder to what extent Baines' 'Western gaze' is reflected in his article, and how different it would be if a local  researched this topic instead.

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Responding to Paulina and Aneurin:

I completely agree with your comments and questions. I found it interesting how in the article Vereni introduces the ICC out of the blue, as if the Western intrusion in other countries' matters is part of a natural course of events. In talking about other episodes of violence in the African continent, Vereni claims that the Western participation was prompted by guilt, "a matter of conscience" as opposed to an (extremely unrealistic) genuine intention of helping people out. While reading this article I kept on thinking how ironic this is, considering that all that Western influence does in these situation in just perpetrating an Imperial system that they claim to be reducing.

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This article was interesting to read and it was particularly interesting to read about spiritual hunting and possession. The spirit of the dead was something that impacted the practices of the living and among the Acholi people, the invisible realm also affected the orders of the living and social reconstruction.

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In response to Eleonora:

I also wondered whilst reading the positionality of Baines and how valuable the article actually is in consideration of their position and their perspectives.

I find that, despite this, Baines explains the complexity of law and how this is manifested in the socialisation of a clan group.
Regardless, I found it interesting that Baines considered the various aspects that may influence power/control such as gender; status; age which often are ignored

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This article highlights the importance of more informal, socio-cultural processes outside the purview of the state, focusing on the promotion of social reconstruction at the micro level. I also found the parts linked to spirit possession interesting. Baines writes about the spirit possession and ritual cleansing in northern Uganda amongst the Acholi people, ‘presenting a discussion of Acholi cosmology and how this informs the day-to-day relations of ordinary Acholi’ (413) ‘nearly half the people returning from LRA captivity underwent the basic cleansing ceremony of nyono-ton gweno (stepping of the egg) to cleanse the returnees of any negative foreign spirits or experiences they encountered while away from home’ (429) She explains how ritual cleansing are expressions of injustice and reflect ordinary people’s attempts to seek moral renewal and social repair.

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“Today, if you want to win an election in Africa, you just have to have the West bash you.

Perhaps the issue lies in the ICC’s need to be decolonised. Are leaders using their hatred towards the role of the ICC and the West to justify their decisions and gain support, and in doing so detracting from the real issue of inequality, corruption and violence?

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In response to Soraya:
I too found the link to spirit possession interesting.
Gives an interesting account of the ways in which the spirit world can be used in times of moral crisis to bring about social reconstruction after conflict. Where there is a lack of a legal system to ‘deal with the legacies of mass violence’ (415) spirits (jogi) can be used to take control of and make sense of situations where justice has not been served, and the state has failed to take accountability.

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In response to Sophie:

I agree. It illustrates 'how the socio-cultural realm fulfils a role that formal processes cannot' (428). Although there is use in formal systems, the informal is equally important and fills a gap by dealing with the 'ordinary' so that people can coexist

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Schlee discusses the logic of ‘negotiation’ in customary law in the article.

However, for Schlee, 'negotiation' “does not lead automatically to justice in the sense of an enforcement of norms agreed on by a community against strong and weak players alike” (268). In particular, ‘negotiations’ tend to favour the stronger party, and the weaker one tends to comprise.

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Shari’a law ‘leaves room for negotiations between the group of a perpetrator and the group of the victim of a violent transgression to come to peace by the exchange of compensation and forgiving,’ (260). I found this interesting that the entire clan takes responsibility rather than the individual, and that in some cases, compensation through the gifting of a commodity, is the way in which justice is served.

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The kinship structure and the idea of clans is certainly interesting and reading about how conflicts and justice is served between clans, from negotiations to compensations. Its also interesting to see the various routes that are taken for justice to be served and the different kinds of laws that exist within Somalia.

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in response to aneurin, I too was shocked by the outcomes of the Kenyan civil war,  'Kenya was brought to the brink of civil war. The official number of dead was between 1,100 and 1,200 by the end of February 2008, when international envoys brokered a truce, though Kenyan investigators say the real figure is probably much higher. Roughly half a million people were displaced; many never returned home. It was the worst crisis Kenya had faced since its fight for independence a half-century earlier.'

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Through the examination of spirit possession and ritual cleansing in Uganda, this article outlines how when looking into social reconstruction a more personal approach should be taken in order to explore the intricacies in society and how it shapes those within said societies lives.
“There are thousands of such cases in the north, of social sanctions against perceived perpetrators and attempts to invoke the spirit world to elicit some form of accountability, atonement and social repair amongst a population devastated by conflict.” (411)

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The violence that occurred following the elections was shocking and I was stunned by the numbers. Violence and elections is something that occurs too often not just in Kenya but in many other African states. And the outcome of the Kenyan civil war goes to show.

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I find it very interesting how it is stated that in order to “win an election in Africa, you just have to have the West bash you” considering that a lot of the laws and customs in Africa have been reformed to fit into a Western framework, which in some ways have been internally adopted and idealised across Africa.

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In this article, Baines explores how the Acholi community in Northern Uganda connects to the spirit world, by spirit possession and ritual cleansing for social repair in a post-conflict context. I found Baines’ approach particularly interesting, as it highlights the importance of what he calls ‘‘the micro level’’ or the ‘‘local’’, as a place of ‘’comprehension’’, ’‘knowledge’’ and ''capacity'' (430). It also asks a more general question: How do people deal with trauma caused by mass violence? How do they symbolically ‘close the past’? And what broader implications does it have on nation reconstruction?

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In response to Zhanhui,

Zhanhui pointed out how negotiations between conflicting parties tend to be compromises that favour the stronger party. The way customary law (xeer) is working benefits the ‘‘demographically, economically and militarily stronger side’’ (258). Schlee argues that one of the main functions of statehood -in theory but not always in practice- is to guarantee the basis of equality for all.

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The role of the ICC is clearly problematic in how it can be used a symbol garnering support in opposition to or in favour of depending on the agenda. Probably some level of supranational legal body is necessary but it is always going to be contested by those whose agenda it does not fit.

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This paper brings attention to the importance of local mechanisms of conflict resolution and social reconstruction after war in bringing actual change to lives. The particularities of the war in Northern Uganda, including the abduction of children forced to join armed groups, and exercise brutality against their own community, meant that many of these children returning home post conflict occupied an unusual and complicated victim-perpetrator status that formal transitional justice mechanisms were unable to address. I found it incredibly interesting how Acholi communities draw on ‘local comsologies’ such as spirit possession in order to address injustice and moral decay, to rebuild their social and moral trust and to learn to live with one another again.

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"For entire communities, like those in Corner Kilak who suffered from decades of military abuse, the social sanction and expulsion of a spirit-possessed cat-man from the camp, their former UPDF torturer who walks around with impunity – enables the community to have some power, some voice, where it is otherwise denied" (430)
Baines' (2010) piece had neatly put together the Acholi case to argue for the importance of indigenous cosmology and ritual in post-conflict repair and community empowerment. The case enriches what the concept of 'transitional justice' may embody, and I think, exposed another level of justice that is to be sought after - the post-colonial justice. Ritual practices were in many cases viewed as the antagonism of progress and development. However, it s exactly such colonial bias that denied ritual's power to facilitate justice.

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I was struck by Baines discussion of justice as a social project. It made me realise that in the everyday, myself and others conceptualise justice as controlled and enabled by institutions, ILO's and states, rather a practice to be practiced within the social realm. These readings however have shown me that this is a very learned western practice, a particular framing of justice that in fact is not universal. In fact, Baines reading emphasised to me the violence that intervening international parties have enacted upon these forms of societal justice.

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As others have mentioned, this New York Times article was very eye opening and shocking because it explains the crisis and violence that erupted in Kenya after the 2007 election. War criminals were to be tried in international court but there was denial of the war crimes by Kenya’s president.

Also, Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor explains that “The government was the criminal. And not only the government. The National Commission on Human Rights report listed more than 200 suspected inciters and funders of the violence, including presidential cabinet members, legislators, businessmen…”.

Furthermore, I liked that this article went into detail about the complexity of prosecuting war criminals. In addition to this, other problems were needing resources, funding, witnesses, evidence. Also, the emotional toll of the prosecutors who would argue about the cases.

This article made me think more critically about the I.C.C and the effectiveness of international organisations in managing conflict and violence.

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In response to Zhanhui's post, the different modes of justice that are utilised in different contexts such as the negotiation reveal the unequal structures between the two parties.

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Shire's paper provides us with a useful insight on how insider-partial mediators can open up negotiations between Al-Shabaab and Somalia''s federal government. Through this analysis, Shire identifies accountability, legitimacy and trust as the three factors that shape the trust both parties have on them. After dwelling on whether terrorists should be negotiated with, this particular statisitics transformed my stance strengthening Shire's argument further-  A RAND Corporation
study that analysed 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006 concluded
that 43% of terrorist campaigns ended with a negotiation settlement compared to 7% that
ended with military success.

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In response to Tripti, Cai and Edward, it is clear that perspective matters. Tripti’s mention of a need to ‘decolonise’ the ICC definitely strikes a cord. There exists a lot of corruption in these African states but as Cai has said many of the African laws present today are reformed to fit Western views, which is why I believe decolonising the ICC might be a step forward. I do however, release how simplistic this is, the long standing colonial history of a state such as Kenya means that power will always be dominant!

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The article by Baines, sheds light on how a shift to rely on more informal, socio-cultural processes without the intervention of the state helps promote social reconstruction at the micro-level. Her reference to the spirit world as one which many Acholis have relied on to “elicit some form of accountability, atonement, and social repair amongst a population devastated by the conflict” (411) is the part I was interested in the most. It comes to show how in states such as Uganda where a legal system and good governance is lacking, and mass violence has taken place, people use social processes such as that of spirits to make sense of situations and earn justice where the state fails to take accountability. In a sense, this reminds me of the Rwandan genocide, a perfect example of a community that enforced social re-engineering.

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I found this article interesting as it shows that the involvement of the international community in conflict resolution is not always a viable approach. The collapse of the Somali government in 1991 has had devastating impacts on citizens hence clan elders have filled Somali state by “replacing the missing legal system with a customary, religiously inspired legal system, Xeer'' (p 5). In Somalia, clan elders play critical roles at the microlevel. The clan elders are trusted by the Somali the Somali population including the Al- Shabaab because of factors such as accountability, legitimacy, and trust. Therefore, they are respected by the Somali government and the Al-Shabaab. Therefore, Shire and other scholars suggest that clan elders should facilitate negotiation between the Somali government and Al- Shabaab. In fact, I agree with Shire’s argument because the traditional system of justice especially the work of clan elders in Somali proves to be effective at the microlevel.

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In response to Hui,
I also fint it revealing that the often romanticised customary law always had a sublayer of power inequality. Schlee therefore argued that customary law does not achieve the western concept of 'justice'. However, how is it self-evident that the western mode of justice is applicable universally?

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Response to Ayan:
I completely agree with the importance of negotiating with labeled 'terrorist groups' -- and the success in conflict resolution that this has the potential to have. In fact, one of the points I found most interesting in the article was that the 'terrorist' label is given to Al Shabaab by the west. Moreover, the label ostracizes the group, and makes them seem completely crazy and evil, and unworthy of engaging in negotiations with. This is an incredibly close minded perspective that is adopted by the west, most probably out of fear, and greatly hinders the prospect for interational 'formal' peace negotiations.