By Evelyne Asaala
Abstract
The war against impunity for international crimes in Africa has brought to the fore several regional initiatives. Other than prosecution efforts at national and regional courts, post-conflict African state practice suggests the incorporation of traditional justice concepts and systems within the broad ambit of the international criminal justice system. The overall concern for this chapter is to establish whether traditional African theories and approaches add value to the fight against impunity in Africa and whether they can offer alternative paths to accountability. The chapter focuses on the two processes: gacaca and mato oput. This is simply because they are the only mechanisms that have either been proposed or used by post-conflict African states in holding perpetrators accountable for international crimes. As such, they provide this study with a sound basis for comparing the ICC and traditional African processes in terms of their effectiveness in holding perpetrators of international crimes accountable. Key in this discussion is the philosophical differences in the conception of justice both at the ICC and within African traditions. Although traditional African theories to justice are as numerous as their approaches, this chapter is most concerned with the trend established in these theories. It argues that these conceptual differences must have played a role in the AU and African states concerns against the ICC. It thus proceeds to analyse the traditional procedures of gacaca and mato oput with the aim of assessing their suitability as accountability measures for international crimes.
