Engaging with Victims and Perpetrators in Transitional ... - FriEnt

FriEnt/KOFF Workshop Report1 . P r e f a c eEngaging with victims and perpetrators is probably one of the most sensitive andcomplex issues for external actors working on development and peace building. Itstarts with defining certain groups as victims or perpetrators in highly complexand politicised contexts, involves legal questions and moral dilemmas, and maytouch on the vision an organisation is striving to realise.Transitional Justice and peace building processes provide a range of mechanismsto deal with past atrocities and pave the way for building a society based onpeace and justice. However, projects often tend to simplify categories of victimsand perpetrators. Moreover, they overlook the necessity that peace buildingprocesses also have to transform these categorisations and build a basis for newidentities beyond that of the past.In our international workshop, jointly organised by the Working Group forDevelopment and Peace (FriEnt) and the Center for Peacebuilding (KOFF) atswisspeace, we discussed some of these challenges and identified ways of dealingwith them. Questions included: How may transitional justice mechanisms takeinto consideration victims and perpetrators as two – sometimes heavilyintertwined – social groups in post-conflict societies? How can the design of suchmechanisms contribute to transform the identities of victims and perpetrators?How are these considerations relevant to decisions development and peaceorganisations have to take?Participants from development and peace building organisations as well asresearch institutions shared their respective experiences. Selected projects andapproaches from different organisations and contexts provided the basis for adiscussion on challenges and practice oriented options.This document presents the main results of the presentations and debates.Furthermore, it tries to pinpoint a number of points to keep in mind for decisionmakingin development and peace building organisations.2