By Musa Saho
The Ministry of Justice together with partners on the 24th and 25th November 2022, hosted the third AU-EU Seminar on the state of transitional justice implementation in Africa and Europe, their successes, failures, and possible areas of intervention at a ceremony held at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara Conference Centre in Bijilo.
The two-day event allowed stakeholders to foster a shared understanding of what constitutes foundational principles of transitional justice and what are the common and possibly diverging elements in the AU and EU approaches.
The participants of the seminar were drawn from representatives of African and European Unions and their member states, particularly those who have implemented in the past or are in the process of implementing various transitional justice processes in their respective societies, transitional justice experts, CSOs, academia, and Think-Tanks involved in transitional justice.
During the workshop, the participants focused more on sharing experiences on past and existing transitional justice initiatives in Africa and Europe.
The dialogue also aimed at exploring the best possible intervention for each of the cases, enhancing their respective experiences and identifying best practices, and seeking possible areas of improvement in the implementation of transitional justice processes.
The 2022 AU-EU Seminar also focused on three main issues; namely comparative experience based on a selection of transitional justice experiences in Africa and Europe; good practices of transitional justice implementations and overcoming the challenges to effective implementation of transitional justice.
Finally, the seminar engendered the following outcomes: a detailed report of proceedings; a policy brief on the outcome of the seminar and the recommendations of technical support to AU/EU Member States implementing transitional justice programmes.
