The Local Impact of the International Standardization of Transitional Justice: Lessons from the Ugandan Case

This Article explores how the international standardization of transitional justice (TJ) has impacted understandings and processes of TJ in Uganda. Taking the starting point in how stakeholders in TJ in Uganda experience matters themselves, the Article investigates to what extent, and how, TJ standardization has guided or influenced a range of TJ-related processes in the country and to what effects. Despite a now clearer understanding of what the TJ standardization process looks like internationally and from what sources it originates,2 there is more limited understanding of how the outcome of that process, in the form of the formulation of a “TJ script”,3 is being received and implemented locally, to what effects and how relevant stakeholders actually perceive that process.4 Through the case study of Uganda this Article seeks to add to this understanding, thus offering an empirically-driven account of how the local implementation of TJ standardization is experienced in a specific context, here Uganda. This is important, only from the point of academic interest, but also because such an inquiry helps inform policymakers and practice, in terms of further developing or adjusting ideas about TJ standardization internationally and local reception.