Justice and Peacebuilding Comparing Experiences and Debates in
Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kosovo and Uganda
Dr. Alistair D. Edgar, the Executive Director of the Academic Council
on the United Nations System (ACUNS)
It is a commonplace assertion that transitional justice interventions are
important, if not essential, components of any potentially successful
processes of reconciliation in cases or situations of war-to-peace
transitions and post-conflict peace building. However, what “justice”
means, and how or where different forms of justice fit within these larger
processes of conflict resolution and sustainable peace – such as
negotiating cease fires and peace settlements, or achieving sustainable
post-conflict peace building – are awkward questions that defy simple
responses and single-variable answers.
Peace and justice too often have become idealized or politicized notions,
sometimes portrayed as intimately and positively intertwined (e.g. “no
peace without justice”), and on other occasions declared to be mutually
contradictory or exclusive goals (e.g. “no peace negotiations without
withdrawal of ICC indictments”).
Based on field research conducted during 2009-2010, the four case studies
presented here – Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kosovo and Uganda – offer
fascinating studies of the complex political debates that are attached to
the ideas, processes and practices of justice and peace building. In two of
the cases (Cambodia and Kosovo) the violent conflict has ended although
other forms of conflict may persist; in one case, Uganda, the worst of the
violence (perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army) has been moved
outside national borders but remains a potential threat; and in
Afghanistan, the war continues while discussions about justice,
reconciliation and reintegration are part of active peace negotiations. In
each case, internal (local, national) and external (regional,
international/global) political, security, social, economic and other
influences have played roles in shaping the nature and forms of the
“justice” that is sought by the various actors involved in some way in the
violent conflicts that have done so much harm to their populations.
What emerges from the material presented here are stories not of a
single, clear and generally-transferable path towards justice,
reconciliation and sustainable peace, but rather of a difficult, awkward
and uncertain process of balancing goals and claims that at different
times can be complementary or contradictory, central or peripheral or
entirely irrelevant, or more often a mixture of values that can change
over time and across circumstance as well as in the eyes of the local,
national or international beholder.
Hosei University Graduate School of
Global and Asian Politics
Justice and Peacebuilding
23 November 2010 14:10~16:40 hrs
Hosei University Ichigaya Campus
Sotobori Kosha S -407
Justice and Peacebuilding
Comparing Experiences and Debates in Afghanistan, Cambodia,
Kosovo and Uganda
Dr. Alistair D. Edgar, the Executive Director of the Academic
Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS)
Programme
14:10
Opening remarks
Professor Nobuo Shimotomai, Head,Graduate School of Global and
Asian Politics
14:15
Introductory lectures
Dr. Alistair D. Edgar,
The Executive Director of the Academic Council on
the United Nations System (ACUNS)
Ms. Madoka Futamura
Director of Studies, Human Rights and Ethics Institute for
Sustainability and Peace United Nations University
Mr. Vesselin Popovski
Senior Academic Officer, Institute for Sustainability and
Peace, United Nations University
15:00
Break
15:10
Welcoming remarks
Professor Atsushi Sugita, Dean, Faculty of Law, Hosei University
15:15
Keynote lecture
Justice and Peacebuilding: Comparing Experiences
and Debates
in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kosovo and Uganda
Dr. Alistair D. Edgar, the Executive Director of the
Academic Council on the United Nations System
(ACUNS)
16:00
Comments and questions by professors and students
16:35
End of the seminar and a photo-taking session
Dr. Alistair D. Edgar is the Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United
Nations System (ACUNS), having returned in August 2010 to the position he held
previously in 2003-2008. He currently also serves as president of the New Delhi-based
International Jurist Organization (IJO), and is a National Board member of the UN
Association in Canada (UNAC). Dr Edgar is a Research Associate at the Laurier Centre for
Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies, and associate professor of Political Science at
Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
1893 a BA Honors in History from Cambridge University (Sidney Sussex College)
1985 a MA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia
1993 a PhD in Political Science from Queen’s University, Canada
1992-1993 the John M. Olin Doctoral Fellow in Economics and National Security at the
Olin Institute, Centre for International Affairs, Harvard University
1995 completed a Certificate in Russian Studies at Moscow State University