ABSTRACT

This article examines transitional justice in Kenya, drawing on interviews and focus groups with survivors of the post-election violence of 2007–2008. Focusing particularly on the experiences of women and internally displaced persons (IDPs), it explores how survivors understood and negotiated waiting for reparations and analyses the effects of temporal uncertainty (around timing and scope) and of inequality (in relation to waiting times). Uncertainty and inequality contributed to survivors’ senses of passivity and exacerbated their feelings of marginalisation. To delay reparations for an uncertain time contributes to senses of continuity with the past, which transitional justice precisely seeks to disrupt. However, the study also demonstrates that waiting is not only endured, but at times actively resisted or rejected, which might be understood as a claim to ownership of local peace and exercise of peacebuilding agency but also as resistance against the dominant temporality of transitional justice. By framing survivors’ experiences with the scholarship on time and power and the “politics of waiting”, the research contributes to the literature on local experiences and understandings of transitional justice and to recent debates around its temporalities.

摘要

本文通过对 2007-2008 年选举后暴力幸存者的访谈和焦点小组调查，研究肯尼亚的过渡时期司法。它特别关注妇女和国内流离失所者 (IDP) 的经历，探讨幸存者如何理解和协商等待赔偿，并分析时间不确定性（围绕时间和范围）和不平等（与等待时间有关）的影响。不确定性和不平等加剧了幸存者的被动感，并加剧了他们被边缘化的感觉。在不确定的时间内延迟赔偿有助于与过去的延续感，而过渡时期的正义正是试图破坏这种感觉。然而，该研究还表明，等待不仅是忍受，而且有时会积极抵制或拒绝，这可以被理解为对当地和平的所有权和建设和平机构的行使的要求，但也可以理解为对过渡时期司法的主要时间性的抵抗。通过用关于时间和权力的学术以及“等待的政治”来构建幸存者的经历，该研究为关于当地经验和对过渡正义的理解的文献以及最近围绕其时间性的辩论做出了贡献。