Facing the Challenges of Transitional Justice Reflections from Post-Genocide Rwanda and Beyond

1.1. Challenges to the Field of Transitional Justice On March 4, 2009, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Bashir. The President is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the conflict-torn Darfur region.1 Not surprisingly, the indictment has caused heated debate. For some, the decision to issue an arrest warrant should be celebrated because it “signals that even those at the top may be held to account for mass murder, rape and torture”.2 For others, the Court’s decision is of deep concern because it is said to undermine the prospects of a lasting peace in Sudan and because it demonstrates how international bodies ignore Africans’ views.3 In Kenya, the question of whether accountability for the violence following the 2007 elections should be pursued locally or before the ICC has proved highly controversial, and the violence has sparked off a more general debate on how the recurrence of political violence can be avoided, for example by undertaking legal and institutional reform.4 The ghost of the past continues to haunt Germany. Despite efforts to rid unified Germany’s state institutions from the worst collaborators of the communist regime in the East, in July 2009 newspapers could reveal how thousands of ex-Stasi officials continue to work as civil servants, leading some to call for yet another round of vetting.5 Only months after President Bush leaving office, a US Senator proposed a South African-style truth commission be established to uncover the Bush administration’s policies and practices in the War on Terror and for Americans to come to “a shared