Lynne Tirrell

An imperfect “politics of justice” seems to be inevitable in the aftermath of genocide. In Rwanda, this is especially true, given the scale of the atrocities, the breadth of participation, and the need to build a justice system from scratch while establishing security and restoring the rule of law. Official contexts for survivor testimony and corresponding perpetrator punishment are crucial for establishing shared norms and narratives, but these processes can destabilize social relations in important ways. Accordingly, without development, these justice mechanisms can undermine social stability and emerging cohesion. The converse is also true: without official contexts of testimony and judgment, development is only material support, and has no recognitive force. Learning from Rwanda’s post-’94 transitional justice, broadly construed, I argue that without development, platforms for testimony and the meting out of punishment yield insufficient recognition and so undermine social stability and emerging cohesion. The converse is also true: without official contexts of testimony and judgment, development is only material support, and lacks crucial recognitive force. The crucial interdependence of development, which provides distributive justice, with criminal proceedings, which offer retributive and restorative justice, has the potential to secure a lasting and stable peace.