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Drinking The Bitter Roots: Gendered Youth, Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Across the South Sudan-Uganda Border
- African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2013
- pp. 171-194
- 10.2979/africonfpeacrevi.3.2.171
- Article
- Additional Information
This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities faced by youth as active participants in processes of postconflict justice and reconciliation in Africa. I draw on field data from South Sudan and Uganda, two countries emerging from decades of brutal and interrelated civil war where youngsters often bore the brunt of the violence. Qualifying the uncritically assumed association between transitional justice, customary law, and reconciliation, research among youth from both countries suggests that these are potentially, but not necessarily, linked processes. I argue for a more nuanced approach to postconflict justice based on a close examination of the differing ways in which these efforts make an impact upon female and male youth in transitional societies.