This chapter conceptualises reconciliation and unreconciliation as two spaces. The chapter analyses Véronique Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana together with the ICTR case Prosecutor v. Bagosora et al. and Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife alongside the ICTY case Prosecutor v. Milošević. The reflective narratives depict geographical proximity, trust and shared culture or history as supportive of the space of reconciliation. Fear and mistrust, physical distance and forced forgiveness maintain unreconciliation, and fear may be symptomatic of the absence of the rule of law. Addressing fear and reconciliation simultaneously could be beneficial and a means to break the cycles of attitudes and behaviours which, for example, allow the lack of trust to prevent communication needed for establishing trust. While reconciliation takes place among and between individuals and different size groups in diverse societal spheres and contexts, the chapter positions the dead as an overlooked stakeholder group.

This chapter maps the overall picture of transitional justice in Rwanda and the former Yugoslav countries, which shapes how the future has been imagined. Since reflective narratives do not always align with the local, national and international actors’ understandings of post-atrocity realities, this chapter explores which mechanisms, policies and practices have sought to contribute to the transitional justice goals of truth, justice, healing and reconciliation. The chapter highlights that studies driven by goals of transitional justice can help identify complementary and contradictory aims and extend the wealth of research that focuses on specific transitional justice mechanisms.

This concluding chapter returns to the aim of the book to locate the conceptual contribution of reflective narratives in the field of transitional justice. It discusses the implications of the case study chapters, reiterating the ways in which the reflective narratives that imagine futures can help rethink existing conceptualisations and challenges of transitional justice. It explores the relevance of the findings to practitioners and policy makers. The chapter also identifies thematic connections of agency, silence, listening, and death or the dead that emerge as a web of spaces and touchpoints across the different chapters and goals of transitional justice. This contributes towards possible future research avenues and leads towards returning the focus on the individual human beings who live with the complex and evolving legacies of genocide and war.

This chapter argues for the need to recognise those who do not heal after atrocity. It analyses Gilbert Gatore’s The Past Ahead and Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una and sets them alongside the ICTR case Prosecutor v. Renzaho and the ICTY case Prosecutor v. Brđanin. The chapter distinguishes narration of pain from the narration of healing, suggesting that both can play a role in (narrative) healing. It shows that momentary relief or respite is a form of healing, and that the moment of death, in particular, a suicide, emerges as the end point of successful and unsuccessful healing. Drawing on pain and healing in trauma and literary studies, the chapter reminds the reader of the longevity of pain experiences and healing processes which are dependent of the person and their physical and social environment. Since the absence of healing may isolate from collective and societal change, this chapter seeks to increase the visibility of those who do not heal in the field of transitional justice and challenge assumptions of the permanence of decrease in pain.

This chapter examines truth, foregrounding the shared characteristics of different types of truth. The chapter brings together Boris Boubacar Diop’s novel Murambi, The Book of Bones and the ICTR case Prosecutor v. Simba alongside Goran Vojnović’s Yugoslavia, My Fatherland and the ICTY case Prosecutor v. Mrkšić et al. Building on insights from narratology, this chapter traces the dialogicality of truth through analysis of the construction of truth in dialogue, the ways in which truths are obscured in dialogue, the impact of the absence of dialogue, and truth that emerges in dialogue with objects and documents. The literary texts offer certainty that remains absent in the ambiguous and open-ended accounts is the legal narratives. Revising the dominant focus on differences between personal, social, legal and forensic truth, the chapter argues that these types of truth are social and partial.

The opening chapter outlines how reflective narratives can elucidate and extend existing conceptualisations of transitional justice goals. It traces the characteristics of historical, legal and creative narratives about the war and genocide in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the different meanings these narratives have given to violence and its aftermath. Here reflective narratives – produced slowly in and through the arts and law – emerge as stories that imagine or help imagine futures different to the present. The chapter introduces the entanglement of the methods of ‘law as literature’ and ‘law in literature’ in this book. It also locates the arts and law in the field of transitional justice, arguing for the need to understand core goals from new perspectives that account for the interdisciplinarity of the field and for the inclusion of non-participatory arts in knowledge production. The chapter closes with an overview of the subsequent chapters.

This chapter engages with critiques about international criminal tribunals that centre on dissatisfaction with justice. It argues that reframing the debate to focus on the bearable level of injustice would invite reflection over and help revise expectations of justice. Engaging with legal and transitional justice scholarship, the chapter analyses Raoul Peck’s film Sometimes in April and Kitty Felde’s play A Patch of Earth together with the ICTR case Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al. and the ICTY case Prosecutor v. Erdemović. These reflective narratives complicate the limits of criminal accountability, and the chapter approaches them through the themes of responsibility, blame and agency. Differentiating between justice and justness, the chapter demonstrates how perceptions of just justice are subjective and dependent on who else is held accountable and how. The chapter also moves outside of the ICTY and ICTR to examine alternative pursuits of justice: impunity through silence and revenge. This reveals that some gaps in justice processes are acceptable while others are unbearable.

This chapter introduces the broad conceptual framework of the processes of subjectivisation within global discourses and connects it to agency. It introduces the idea of situational agency and draws upon Mahmood’s work to suggest that agency can be found in the ‘inhabitation of norms’. the chapter provides a background context to post-genocide Rwandan policies, introducing the key agenda of unity and reconciliation, and presents Rwanda as a post-colonial state. Finally, this chapter problematises the collection and interpretation of field data in a post-colonial setting.

The first half of this chapter explores the linguistic means by which Twa tell their story. By mobilising linguistic resources, they are challenging their continued exclusion under the charge of ‘mind-set’ problems and are attempting to renegotiate the social constructs that govern the position of Batwa in Rwandan society. As such, the language practice of contradiction is read as an assertion by Twa of their full membership in society and a demand for equal care. The second half of the chapter locates the Rwandan state as the key mediator of global life for Rwanda’s Twa, translating global ordering narratives into the everyday. The state makes use of the development narrative, refracting it through the prism of national unity, to offer Twa an attractive and accessible vision of a non-fragmented modern Rwandan subject.

This chapter unpacks how narratives about Rwanda’s Twa are created. It seeks to understand how knowledge about Twa is produced, and how the Twa are created, re-created, and re-positioned as indigenous and development subjects in the jurisdictional encounters of the global discourses of development and indigeneity with national policies on unity and reconciliation. The chapter identities three main stories told of the Twa. The first story is that of indigeneity, of a forest people distinct, dispossessed, and suffering. The second tale is of a community historically marginalised but not ethnically different. The third account views Twa simply as poor and vulnerable, positioning them as national development subjects.

This chapter explores the construction of Twa as global development subjects within the Rwandan context and asks how they position themselves within that landscape, formed by the intersection of the global development narrative and Rwanda’s unity and reconciliation agenda. This chapter interrogates the state’s development narrative in the context of the global development discourse and examines its ability to offer a believable and accessible vision of progress. The Twa in our study push back against the de-politicising effect of development and its processes, whereby the emphasis is placed on the individual and their mind-set. However, they do so not to emphasise their ethnic apartness but to assert their right to the attributes of Rwandanness, notably land. Their answer is thus not to refuse to participate in the modern Rwanda but actively to seek it by demanding equal care.

This chapter explores the processes and form of the imagined national community in Rwanda in light of global discourses of difference, focusing on the space of identity that the state narrative of unity allows for Twa to navigate their subjectivisation as Rwandans. Our data shows that many Twa buy into the government’s narratives of national unity and ‘Rwandan-ness’. They choose to identify themselves as Rwandan and appear willing to forgo Twa identity for the promise of belonging and progress that they understand national narratives of unity to offer. To understand this as forced assimilation – whether through the violence of law or economic circumstances – is too simple a reading: Twa individuals are actively using the ‘Ndi Umunyarwanda’ programme messaging to create spaces of inclusion for themselves within Rwandan society.

This chapter explores how the Twa’s space of nature is created in Rwanda by the encounter between global narratives of indigeneity and conservationism with global capitalism and national social norms. These are refracted through the state’s nationalisation agenda and through policies that condition the access of Twa to resources such as land and together form an important element of the space in which they can negotiate their place in Rwandan society. The response of Twa to questions about nature suggests that they have no special connection to nature or to the forests more particularly. Instead, their responses locate them as ordinary villagers focused on subsistence farming and on survival, but draw also upon national cultural norms of success and status. Whereas traditional land is a key part of articulating indigenous identity in global discourse, the Twa’s desire for land cultivation is non-traditional and instead symbolises the aspiration to inclusion and belonging in the mainstream.

‘The price of victory’ was how Jean Monnet, pioneer of European integration, described Britain’s self-exclusion from the foundational years of European integration. As a late entrant (1973), it was obliged to accept many arrangements that did not suit its interests. Margaret Thatcher and her successors tried to negotiate opt-outs to protect what they deemed Britain’s vital interests as the European Community developed into the European Union (EU), until David Cameron tried to resolve the issue once and for all through renegotiation and an in-or-out referendum. Cameron was outwitted by Boris Johnson – a brilliant political showman – but he in turn had no strategy for his surprise Brexit victory. The chapter explores the struggles of successive Tory premiers – especially May, Johnson and Sunak – to hold their party together and get Brexit done, without isolating Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. After the Tories lost the 2024 election, the new Labour government was left on the sidelines of the EU, trying to sort out piecemeal opt-ins – an ironic inversion of Britain’s posture when it was inside the EU.

The services sector has been the centrepiece of Rwanda’s development strategy since 2000. This chapter describes the evolution of the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (RPF) goals of transforming its landlocked disadvantages into an opportunity through becoming land-linked. In particular, the goal involves Rwanda becoming a regional hub for transport, tourism, sports and finance. The chapter begins by providing a critical overview of services-based strategies, highlighting their merits and limitations. It then describes the contradictory tensions emerging within Rwanda’s services-based strategy, particularly because the progressive image the RPF attempts to portray is often at odds with domestic realities. The evolution of Rwanda’s tourism strategy is discussed, which focuses on attracting high-end tourists and transforming Kigali into a hub for transport, high-profile events and conferences. The chapter describes how services strategies have evolved in line with Rwanda’s political settlement: at first, providing opportunities to private Rwandan capitalists but then gradually relying on foreign investors and government-affiliated investors. The chapter highlights that Rwanda’s strategy failed to prioritise linkages, which is a result of the elite vulnerability shaping domestic state–business relationships.

This chapter introduces the ‘structuralist’ form of political settlements analysis employed in this book. The political settlements framework, initially developed by Mushtaq Khan, has gained increasing popularity but has evolved in very different directions. Political settlements analysis (PSA) was appealing to scholars because it encouraged analysis of power relations shaping development policy, highlighting how distributions of power among organised groups shaped how institutions operated. Influential donor-funded research programmes have aligned it more with neoclassical economics, and this has led to the obfuscation of the structuralist and historical materialist roots of the framework. This chapter elaborates the structuralist and historical materialist roots of political settlements analysis. It highlights the differences between non-structuralist and structuralist approaches to political settlements analysis in relation to the concept of holding power and its components: economic structure, rents, ideas and ideology, and violence and conflict. The chapter highlights how PSA can be used to help understand the contemporary transnational nature of vulnerabilities shaping late-development challenges.

This chapter describes Rwanda’s record within the manufacturing sector. Until recently, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) did not prioritise manufacturing-based growth because of the high transport costs associated with its landlocked geographical position. While there has been some attempt at refocusing on industrial policy since 2015, because of a rising trade deficit and the urgent need to create employment, there has not been substantial progress. Rwanda has not achieved significant advances in increasing industrial employment, production and exports. After presenting the evolution of Rwanda’s industrial policy, the chapter provides detailed examples of three sectors: apparels (textiles and garments), construction materials and pharmaceuticals. In line with dynamics in other sectors, domestic capital has been marginalised in favour of supporting RPF-affiliated firms or relying on foreign investors. Some foreign investors like Volkswagen and BioNTech have invested in Rwanda with much fanfare, but most success has been driven by RPF-affiliated firms. Rwanda’s hopes for structural transformation fall at a key domestic hurdle: building effective state–business relationships aimed at technological capability acquisition for latecomer firms.