‘There is no peace without justice’. This oft-repeated mantra papers over the complex reality of peacebuilding: while post-conflict justice is essential to sustainable peace, the search for justice can sometimes prove a barrier to reconciliation and post-conflict recovery. ‘Justice’ is also as challenging to define as ‘peace’. Justice for whom? Retributive justice, or restorative justice? Will one person’s justice look like revenge or compromise to another? When pursuing justice, are we primarily interested in community peace or in the inner peace of people most impacted by violence and abuses?
Visualising Peace student Zoe Gudino has been researching these challenging questions. As well as examining the tensions that can arise between the pursuit of peace and the pursuit of justice, she has been exploring different models of justice within different models of peacebuilding. She explores ‘the amnesty dilemma’ in this museum entry, and she reflects on ‘truth and reconciliation’ processes and the amplification of indigenous and marginalised voices in justice-and-peace processes in this presentation. You can read her fuller findings in the report set out below (also available here):