Reconstructing and Reconciling a War-Torn World (Commentary‪)‬

Around the world today, numerous communities face an immediate future of intense violence and social upheaval. (1) Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, the Solomon Islands and the Congo are just some of the most obvious examples. In other places, after years of war, there are signs of reconciliation: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka. In Bosnia in September 2003, for example, a memorial service was held for the 7000 Muslim men and boys who were massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995. At the service there were two remarkable signs of change. Security was provided in part by Bosnian Serb police, and the Bosnian Serb prime minister talked about 'respect for the dead' and called for reconciliation. Such a scenario would have been inconceivable in past years. (2) In Rwanda, across 2003, communities experimented with Gacaca tribunals--grass-roots courts conducted to attempt to alleviate the pressure on criminal courts in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide when 800,000 people were killed. In November last year, 673 such tribunals were begun. By comparison, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is grinding on slowly and ineffectively, and although the ex-Information Minister Eliezer Niyiteyeka was sentenced to life-imprisonment in May, we have only seen a total of eleven judgements since the Tribunal began in January 1997. (3) The signs of hope come from the elsewhere, with examples such as the 'Remembering Rwanda' Tenth Anniversary Memorial Project organized for 2004. The hope comes from dealing directly with the problems rather than trying to ignore the past or paint a liberal-capitalist coat of paint over the ruins inherited from times of crisis.