Source: (2010) Dissertation. Doctor of Philosophy. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
The field of transitional justice has been haunted and enriched by the peace versus justice
dilemma and the difficulty of navigating the thin line between the logic of
appropriateness and the logic of consequence. These questions have gained renewed
urgency over the last two decades as the increasing vigor of international criminal law
and the human rights discourse demanded that accountability replace impunity as a
general norm after mass atrocities. The goal of this study is to challenge the notion that
war crimes courts may undermine peace and stability by adapting this debate to a new
institution, the first ever permanent international criminal tribunal, and its first
investigations and trials in Central and Eastern Africa. The central thesis of this
dissertation is that, in the context of the International Criminal Court’s involvement in
Uganda, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the pursuit of justice measures
has not undermined peace. I set out to examine whether the court’s multiple interventions
in this region of the world have been followed by a deterioration or exacerbation of the
conflicts under study and/or the failure of peace negotiations caused by the question of
accountability. I conclude that this has not been the case in the contexts under review,
and that it is wrong to present the conceptual pairs of peace and justice as opposing or
contradictory. (author’s abstract)
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