Contextualized Transitional Justice Policy Development in Uganda: Differentiating between Normativity Types in Evidence-Based Problem Analysis

This article discusses the fundamental impact of normativity on producing evidence-based guidance for context-sensitive transitional justice policy. It draws on lessons learned from Uganda’s complex transitional justice context and extensive fieldwork to demonstrate the necessity and the means to differentiate between belief-based normativity and evidence-based normativity in conducting problem analysis as a crucial site that determines the integrity of evidence-based guidance. It also establishes that evidence-based normativity guiding problem analysis must include empirical evidence of societal dynamics and views of affected communities or there is a significantly higher risk of belief-based normativity decontextualizing strategy development. Findings establish significant substantive differences between the problem sets identified for intervention using a contextualized approach shaped by evidence-based normativity and those in Uganda’s National Transitional Justice Policy (NTJP), which was heavily influenced by belief-based liberal-legalist norms and standardized practice. Crucially, findings also show that the conventional mechanisms prioritized in the NTJP actively work against the mechanisms and aims affected communities prioritize for meaningful redress and to prevent recurrence of mass violence. The article offers concrete recommendations on how to evade belief-based normativity in academic and applied research models intended to produce evidence-based guidance for genocide and mass atrocities prevention.