'Somehow this whole process became so artificial': Exploring the transitional justice implementation gap in Uganda

This article explores a key challenge in contemporary international efforts to promote transitional justice (TJ) in nontransitioning, conflict-affected states: the ‘implementation gap,’ in which policies are designed and funded but neither enacted nor implemented. Findings based on long-term qualitative fieldwork in Uganda indicate the implementation gap is co-constituted by technocratic donor approaches and domestic elite political maneuvering in a semi-authoritarian regime. The interaction between the two produces two forms of political artifice: ‘isomorphic mimicry’ and calculated stasis, which stall the emergence of substantive TJ reform. Findings are relevant to the wide range of nontransitioning contexts where TJ is promoted by international donors and have important implications for its claimed potential to catalyze or restore civic trust in political systems in the aftermath of massive human rights violations

Justice in the world’s most difficult places

Anna Macdonald introduces the JSRP’s newly published Special Issue on the local realities of law and justice. Download the full issue

Between norms, politics contests and social upheavals: justice in the JSRP’s research sites

In this blog, Tom Kirk and Anna Macdonald explore the JSRP’s research on local justice mechanisms in conflict-affected states. They argue that the accessibility and legitimacy of justice institutions cannot be assumed, and that those wishing to engage them must understand them as embedded in wider social norms, political contests and upheavals

Being normal: Stigmatization of Lord's Resistance Army returnees as 'moral experience' in post-war northern Uganda

The literature on Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) returnees in Acholiland, northern Uganda tells us that those who returned from the rebel group are likely to experience stigma and social exclusion. While the term is deployed frequently, ‘stigma’ is not a well-developed concept and most of the evidence we have comes from accounts of returnees themselves. Focusing instead on the ‘stigmatizers,’ this article theorises stigmatisation as part of the ‘moral experience’ of regulating post-war social repair. Through interview-based and ethnographic methods, it finds that stigmatisation of LRA returnees takes many forms and serves multiple functions, calling into question whether this catch-all term actually obscures more than it illuminates. While stigmatisation is usually practised as a form of ‘social control’, its function can be ‘re-integrative’ rather than purely exclusionary. Through the northern Ugandan case study, this article seeks to advance conceptual and empirical understanding of the manifestations and functions of stigmatisation in spaces of return, challenging the logic underpinning those interventions which seek to reduce it

The trial of Thomas Kwoyelo: opportunity or spectre – a new paper by Anna Macdonald and Holly Porter

In this blog post, Anna Macdonald and Holly Porter examine the political and social dynamics that shape local perspectives on the first war crimes prosecution of a former Lord’s Resistance Army fighter, Thomas Kwoyelo. This week they published an open-access article in Africa, exploring these issues in depth, based on long-term research on the case since it began in 2009

Digital Techniques for Documenting and Preserving Cultural Heritage

In this unique collection the authors present a wide range of interdisciplinary methods to study, document, and conserve material cultural heritage. The methods used serve as exemplars of best practice with a wide variety of cultural heritage objects having been recorded, examined, and visualised. The objects range in date, scale, materials, and state of preservation and so pose different research questions and challenges for digitization, conservation, and ontological representation of knowledge. Heritage science and specialist digital technologies are presented in a way approachable to non-scientists, while a separate technical section provides details of methods and techniques, alongside examples of notable applications of spatial and spectral documentation of material cultural heritage, with selected literature and identification of future research. This book is an outcome of interdisciplinary research and debates conducted by the participants of the COST Action TD1201, Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage, 2012–16 and is an Open Access publication available under a CC BY-NC-ND licence.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_arc_cdh/1000/thumbnail.jp

Pursuing justice in northern Uganda #LSEreturn

Anna Macdonald and Holly Porter explore issues of justice, accountability and social repair in the context of postconflict northern Ugand

Task dialog by native-Danish talkers in Danish and English in both quiet and noise

The zip files contain recorded conversations between 19 pairs of normal-hearing native-Danish talkers taking part in an experiment in the lab of the Hearing Systems Group at The Technical University of Denmark during October-November 2016. Each participant pair conversed in each of four conditions: - In their first language (Danish) without background noise (L1-quiet) - In their first language (Danish) with background noise (L1-noise) - In their second language (English) without background noise (L2-quiet) - In their second language (English) with background noise (L2-noise) The conversations were recorded in three blocks with a break between each block. Each block consisted of a conversation from each of the four conditions (in a random order). In each conversation, the pairs found 10 differences between two almost identical pictures (DiapixUK; Baker and Hazan, 2011). The pictures were randomized across conditions. The background noise was a mixed-gender 6-talker babble-like vocoded noise (ICRA 7, Dreschler et al. (2001)). The pairs were seated in separate sound booths and could not see each other. Each talker wore a Shure WH20 microphone (close mic) along with a pair of Sennheiser HD650 headphones. An operator sat outside the door monitoring the conversations and had the opportunity to talk to the participants through an operator microphone. In the headphones, both talkers heard a mix of themselves, their conversational partner, and the background noise (in the noise conditions). The gains were set and held constant such that the speech level presented by the headphones was the same as the level in the soundbooth 1 m away from the talker. In total four channels were recorded using an RME Fireface 802 soundcard at 24 bit, 48 kHz, with Matlab 2016a: Channel 1: the microphone of Talker 1 Channel 2: the microphone of Talker 2 Channel 3: the operator microphone Channel 4: The mix sent to the headphones Prior to recording, all 20 pairs provided written consent for the recordings to be used in the conversation experiment. After the recordings had been completed, we recognized that these recordings might be useful for others. Thus we approached the participants and asked if they would be willing to make the recordings publicly available. 19 out of the 20 pairs gave written consent to make the recordings publicly available. However, pair 12 asked that one of their conversations not be made publicly available (the third replicate of the conversation in Danish in quiet). Thus, this conversation and the conversations from the pair that did not provide written consent to make the recordings public (pair 9) are not included here. The file "Recordings_4channel_48kHz_24bit.zip" contains the original recordings. When uncompressed, the wav files are approximately 42 GB in total. The file "Recordings_2channel_22050Hz_16bit.zip" contains only channels 1 and 2 (the microphones from both talkers) from the recordings, which have been downsampled to 22050 Hz and rescaled as 16 bit wav files. When uncompressed, the wav files are approximately 6.4 GB in total. In both zip files, there are individual wav files for each conversation and the file names are structured as follows: TalkerPair_Condition_Replicate.wav. For any questions, please contact Anna Josefine Sørensen: [email protected] or Ewen MacDonald: [email protected] References: R. Baker and V. Hazan. DiapixUK: task materials for the elicitation of multiple spontaneous speech dialogs. Behavior Research Methods, 43(3):761–770, 2011. ISSN 1554-3528. doi: 10.3758/s13428-011-0075-y. W. Dreschler, H. Verschuure, C. Ludvigsen, and S. Westermann. ICRA Noises: Artificial Noise Signals with Speech-like Spectral and Temporal Properties for Hearing Instrument Assessment: Ruidos ICRA: Señates de ruido artificial con espectro similar al habla y propiedades temporales para pruebas de instrumentos auditiv. International Journal of Audiology, 40(3):148–157, 2001. ISSN 1499-2027. doi: 10.3109/00206090109073110