Social Science Research Council

This debate is organized by Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR), working in partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice – Africa, and The Darfur Consortium. For PDF documents of the debate please go to http://www.csls.ox.ac.uk/otjr.php?show=currentDebate10. To participate please follow the submissions guidelines below and send an 800-1500 word contribution to the debate editor: lydiah-kemunto.bosire@politics.ox.ac.uk.

This article is part of a debate organized by Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) in collaboration with Moi University (Eldoret) and Pambazuka News. A selection of essays based on this debate will be published in an edited volume by Fahamu Books. For PDF documents of the debate please go to www.csls.ox.ac.uk/otjr.php.

When Prof. Makau Mutua suggested that the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) may have lessons for Kenya, he focused on the robust recommendations of the Commission. He did not explore another reason why Kenya might look to Liberia: the crisis of credibility that plagued the beginning of Liberia’s TRC process. This essay argues that there are good reasons to take seriously the challenges to credibility, because they often denote a shortcoming in institutional legitimacy, itself thought to influence the effectiveness of transitional justice processes.

This is the second of three essays on misconceptions in debates over transitional justice in Kenya. The first essay considered complementarity and the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), and argued that, if Kenya’s situation was otherwise admissible to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the TJRC in its current form is unlikely to satisfy the Court’s complementarity test. This essay considers the discussion on domestic prosecutions in Kenya.

The Kenyan Cabinet recently resolved to put forward the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) as a way to address the post-election violence. In this first of three essays looking at some of the misconceptions in the transitional justice debate in Kenya (the next two contributions will consider domestic and international prosecutions respectively), I evaluate whether the establishment of the TJRC makes the Kenyan situation inadmissible before the International Criminal Court (ICC).