Abstract
This article discusses the fundamental impact of normativity on producing evidence-based guidance for context-sensitive transitional justice policy. It draws on lessons learned from Uganda’s complex transitional justice context and extensive fieldwork to demonstrate the necessity and the means to differentiate between belief-based normativity and evidence-based normativity in conducting problem analysis as a crucial site that determines the integrity of evidence-based guidance. It also establishes that evidence-based normativity guiding problem analysis must include empirical evidence of societal dynamics and views of affected communities or there is a significantly higher risk of belief-based normativity decontextualizing strategy development. Findings establish significant substantive differences between the problem sets identified for intervention using a contextualized approach shaped by evidence-based normativity and those in Uganda’s National Transitional Justice Policy (NTJP), which was heavily influenced by belief-based liberal-legalist norms and standardized practice. Crucially, findings also show that the conventional mechanisms prioritized in the NTJP actively work against the mechanisms and aims affected communities prioritize for meaningful redress and to prevent recurrence of mass violence. The article offers concrete recommendations on how to evade belief-based normativity in academic and applied research models intended to produce evidence-based guidance for genocide and mass atrocities prevention.
First Page
212
Last Page
245
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Phil Clark, Ashad Sentongo, Jane Frances Adongo, Paul Gready, Holly Porter, Luisa Calvete Portela Barbosa, Kerry Whigham, Maxim Pensky, Simon Robins, and Victor Ochen for their invaluable feedback at different stages of this multi-year research study. I also extend my deepest thanks to Kristina Hook, Jamie Wise, and Douglas Irvin-Erickson for their support and enthusiasm for my contextualized approach and findings, and their constructive feedback on successive drafts of this article. Most importantly, I extend my deepest appreciation to the participants in Buganda and Lango, and practitioners directly involved in Uganda’s transitional justice policy development process for their time, candidness, and selflessness in sharing their indispensable knowledge. I am also grateful to the British Institute in Eastern Africa, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and the State University of New York at Binghamton’s Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, for their financial, in kind, and technical support.
Dedication
I dedicate this to my delightful and beautiful baby girl Elvi, I love you.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.18.1.1964
Recommended Citation
Birjandian, Saghar Shahidi
(2024)
"Contextualized Transitional Justice Policy Development in Uganda: Differentiating between Normativity Types in Evidence-Based Problem Analysis,"
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal:
Vol. 18:
Iss.
1:
212–245.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.18.1.1964
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol18/iss1/15
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
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