Sarah M. H. Nouwen – författare

Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 ended over two decades of civil war and led to South Sudan's independence. Peacemaking that brought about the agreement and then sought to sustain it involved, alongside the Sudanese, an array of regional and western states as well as international organisations. This was a landmark effort to create and sustain peace in a war-torn region. Yet in the years that followed, multiple conflicts continued or reignited, both in Sudan and in South Sudan. Peacemaking attempts multiplied. Authored by both practitioners and scholars, this volume grapples with the question of which, and whose, ideas of peace and of peacemaking were pursued in the Sudans and how they fared. Bringing together economic, legal, anthropological and political science perspectives on over a decade of peacemaking attempts in the two countries, it provides insights for peacemaking efforts to come, in the Sudans and elsewhere.

The discourse, scholarship, and practice of transitional justice have become pivotal to addressing historical systematic injustices. However, until recently, the field has largely overlooked some of the most enduring and pervasive injustices of human history: racism and the colonialism and slave-trade that both reflected and fuelled it. Race and Transitional Justice examines how race and racism interact with transitional justice mechanisms and institutions to question why this is the case, and how it could be different. Bringing together diverse perspectives to examine the historical and socio-political contexts of transitional justice, this book argues that the field remains largely inattentive to the role of race. As a result, transitional justice institutions may be sustaining the very racialization that they are expected to remedy. The contributions offer a range of responses. Some call to abandon the whole field, citing its complicity in the indefinite maintenance of settler hegemony. Others consider transitional justice an essential space to work towards a more just, non-racist, social order. The result is a sensitive reflection into emancipatory transitional justice futures.

Of the many expectations attending the creation of the first permanent International Criminal Court, the greatest has been that the principle of complementarity would catalyse national investigations and prosecutions of conflict-related crimes and lead to the reform of domestic justice systems. Sarah Nouwen explores whether complementarity has had such an effect in two states subject to ICC intervention: Uganda and Sudan. Drawing on extensive empirical research and combining law, legal anthropology and political economy, she unveils several effects and outlines the catalysts for them. However, she also reveals that one widely anticipated effect - an increase in domestic proceedings for conflict-related crimes - has barely occurred. This finding leads to the unravelling of paradoxes that go right to the heart of the functioning of an idealistic Court in a world of real constraints.

Of the many expectations attending the creation of the first permanent International Criminal Court, the greatest has been that the principle of complementarity would catalyse national investigations and prosecutions of conflict-related crimes and lead to the reform of domestic justice systems. Sarah Nouwen explores whether complementarity has had such an effect in two states subject to ICC intervention: Uganda and Sudan. Drawing on extensive empirical research and combining law, legal anthropology and political economy, she unveils several effects and outlines the catalysts for them. However, she also reveals that one widely anticipated effect – an increase in domestic proceedings for conflict-related crimes – has barely occurred. This finding leads to the unravelling of paradoxes that go right to the heart of the functioning of an idealistic Court in a world of real constraints.