'I cannot accept what I have not done': Storytelling, Gender and Transitional Justice

Abstract

Storytelling can be a process of seeking social equilibrium after violence. We examine this proposition through the stories of Ajok, an Acholi woman who was abducted by the rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda and who was forced into marriage and motherhood. We consider how her stories contest discrimination by her neighbours and family since her return, creatively reinterpreting the past to defend her innocence and moral character throughout the war and to defend her rightful place in present society as an Acholi woman and mother. The article concludes by reflecting on the value of locally based and culturally relevant storytelling for survivors in the field and practice of transitional justice.

Antenatal Care and Couples’ HIV Testing in Rural Northern Uganda: A Gender Relations Analysis

“…Dolan (2011) describes the conflict as having created an overall reversal of fortunes for the Acholi people of northern Uganda, who experienced the destruction of their livelihoods alongside witnessing the atrocities of war. Over 60,000 children and youth were abducted over the course of the war (Baines & Stewart, 2011;Westerhaus et al, 2007). Abducted girls' and women's experiences of forced marriage and other sexual violence invoked lasting trauma and injury.…”

‘There is violence across, in all arenas’: listening to stories of violence amongst sexual minority refugees in Uganda

“…Despite hours of giving humanitarian testimonies between them, most sexual minority refugees I knew had never been able to recount stories about persecution and violence suffered on the basis of their sexuality, nor been able to report crimes to the police. This invisibility has, for many, reinforced their exclusion from a wider rights-bearing humanity As Arendt argues We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human 74 A young man identifying as transgender often told me he longed to regain my human being As Baines and Stewart argue, storytelling can permit people to renegotiate their social marginalization and insist on their innocence and social worth 75 One man who described himself as bio-sex asked of me, can we get our rights as a human being, can it be possible? We are human beings like others?…”

Transitional Justice, Education, and Sexual Violence Stigma: The Results of a Schools‐based Study in Bosnia‐Herzegovina

“…Based on their work in northern Uganda, for example, Baines and Stewart underline how, through story telling,`survivors might renegotiate their social marginalization and insist on their innocence and social worth'. 115 The article has emphasized the importance of education in this regard, underlining the latter's`transformative potential'. 116 Although it has focused on BiH, the schools project which it has presented is an example of a more attitudinal-focused approach to transitional justice that can open up new discursive and narrative spaces ± and thus new textual/paratextual relationships ± in which victims/survivors are supported rather than stigmatized.…”