Transitional justice in the post-revolution Sudan 4-4

Dr. Sami Abdul Halim Said
Fifth: Restorative Justice:
As we have already stated, as transitional justice can be applied through national judicial institutions, as we have seen in international experience, transitional justice can be applied through non-national justice institutions. As noted above, justice may not take its formal judicial image, nor may it take atypical forms of justice, including the use of non-judicial means, which may include the employment of popular communities, customs and traditions, and peoples institutions in the administration of justice. This is called restorative justice. The concept of truth and reconciliation had been widely used in Africa and Latin America and had evolved into an effective global strategy for dealing with war crimes and other human rights violations. Truth and reconciliation commissions consider that confronting and exposing the past is essential for the successful transition from conflict, tension and resentment to peace and interdependence.

It is understood that the restorative justice approach encompasses at least four important elements: truth-finding, justice, compassion (amnesty) and peace. It is believed that true healing requires three basic steps: remembering the atrocities committed, then repentance, and pardon.

The investigation of war crimes and truth commissions can help in the process of memory and truth-finding, and help inform the public of the extent to which victims have suffered. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission seeks to heal relations between the opposing sides by exposing all relevant facts, characterizing the truth from lies, allowing confession and confession of guilt, to be a platform of public solace and mourning, appropriate for forgiveness and healing.

1. Forms and patterns of restorative justice:
Restorative justice may take several forms at the national level, especially as popular experiences, peoples inheritance is filled with the application of restorative justice to civil conflicts and personal crimes, and cases of property abuse. Here are some possible patterns of restorative justice:

Magistrates Councils
Many conflicts in rural and tribal communities go beyond direct persons (perpetrators and victims) to the people and tribes of the parties. In many Sudanese societies, the experience (peace councils) has spread, as a pattern of restorative justice, and the peace councils find their basis in tribal societies, which try to remedy peoples mistakes and abuses through reconciliation, promotion of social cohesion and peace. Mediation takes the image of the victim and the criminal meeting, in one place, face to face, attending next to the victim (s) and the perpetrator (s) of their family and relatives, and leaders from other tribes or prestigious clerics may be invited, and may include more parties, such as members of the victims family or perpetrator, community friends, teachers, neighbors or counselors.

Meetings of the Peace take place through an invitation invited by a distinguished figure in society, who plays the role of facilitator, organizing dialogue, using social influences, and stimulating religious and societal values to help communities to find a solution to the conflict between the parties. The family chief or her representative may participate by speaking on behalf of the offenders family or the victims family.

Compensation
This is also a pattern of restorative justice, which has proved effective in many similar experiences. Compensation is largely linked to the procedures of the Magistrates Councils, and is often initiated within the Magistrates Councils. At the victim-perpetrator reconciliation meetings, the offenders parents have the opportunity to introduce an initiative to provide compensation to their victims or families. According to Sudanese experience, compensation may be monetary or non-monetary, in the form of a number of cattle or sheep. The perpetrator may be required to do some work for the victim, or for one of the charities chosen by the victim or his parents.

If the offence goes beyond bodily harm to theft or seizure of property, the Magistrates Council must address this issue comprehensively.

Truth and reconciliation
According to international experiences in reconciliation procedures, victims or their relatives have the opportunity to tell the stories of their suffering and to give perpetrators the opportunity to face the reality of their atrocities and violations. This aspect does not find much interest in Sudanese peace councils, although they exist in different formats, depending on the nature of each case and each social group. The offender also has the opportunity to explain the circumstances of the commission of the offence, what his motives were at the time, and to explain how the offence occurred, often including the offenders conversation or his representative in apology and regret. It is important in Sudanese applications to provide an opportunity to tell stories and reveal facts, because it facilitates the restoration of peaceful coexistence.

In order for the experience of the Sudans peace councils, in the current historical context, to succeed in achieving amnesty and promoting social peace, this mechanism needs to be strengthened by adding the number of structural reforms, including by providing material, psychological and social support to victims as well as rehabilitating perpetrators in a manner that ensures their peaceful and effective survival in society.

2. Objectives of restorative justice:
The objectives of restorative justice can be summarized as follows:
- Restorative justice is concerned with the victims recovery from injuries, the restoration of their normal lives by criminals, adherence to the law and repairing the damage caused to social relations.
- It seeks to involve all stakeholders and provide opportunities for victims to participate directly in the truth-finding process. Victims, offenders and affected communities are all key stakeholders in the restorative process.
- Restorative justice is primarily aimed at providing for victims material, social and psychological needs.
- Restorative justice is a forward-looking process, at the same time a preventive response that seeks to understand crime in the social context in which it occurred. It is forward-looking to examine the root causes of violence and crime in order to reduce them and break their cycles of recurrence.
- One of the tasks of restorative justice is to consider justice in a manner consistent with the objectives of peacebuilding in transition, including the rehabilitation and integration of criminals into the community of vital aspects of restorative justice. The justice process in this way strengthens the social fabric and encourages changes that will prevent similar damage in the future.
- Restorative justice should be integrated with legal justice as a complementary process to improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of justice as a whole.

The experiences of political transition in developing countries have given us many lessons that can be learned in a manner commensurate with the Sudanese situation. In these experiments, we may find what has created non-judicial methods that help achieve popular satisfaction and work to tone the social fabric and build trust between the components of the people and the governing bodies. There are cases in which crimes have been so many, to the extent that we can say, that they outweigh the potential of state institutions, and in that new ideas may be used to establish stability and security in society and to eliminate hatred and hostility.

Because we are in the process of establishing justice following a popular revolution against dictatorship, we are using the experience of Tunisia after the revolution, where the "Truth and Dignity Commission" was formed, which was established to deal with political, social and economic crimes, and to investigate human rights violations committed, from 1 July 1955 until December 2013. The Authority has received over 62 thousand complaints concerning a wide range of human rights violations, including cases of arbitrary detention, torture, unfair trials, sexual violence and religious and ethnic discrimination. The first public hearings were held on 17 November.

This body promotes the policy of declaring violations by perpetrators and seeking amnesty and reconciliation. In public hearings in the presence of victims or their parents. There are many experiences of reconciliation and pardon sessions, but we have chosen this Tunisian model as being consistent with the state of revolution over dictatorship. With regard to the application of transitional justice in the context of the end of the armed conflict in Darfur, Kordofan and the Blue Nile, it is expected that the peace documents will include numerous formal and informal transitional justice mechanisms. With regard to the non-judicial machinery of transitional justice (restorative justice) in post-armed conflict settings, it would be ideal to examine Rwandas experience in employing traditional peoples courts to deal with civil war violations at the community level. It is therefore important to employ the peoples heritage in the establishment of Justice in communities affected by armed conflict and related violations, particularly the rich inheritance in Darfur and Southern Kordofan, to be part of informal transitional justice mechanisms.

With this diversity of justice methods, access to justice expands, and the general sense of satisfaction expands, directly contributing to the acceptance and coexistence of the social components that have witnessed a long history of war, hatred and abuse.