Teaching Transitional Justice

A couple of days ago I got a call from another organization in Bangkok that works to support and empower Burmese activists. Similar to the school up north, this program selects a small group of young minority women to be interns on a yearlong educational program. They spend several months receiving training at the facility in Bangkok and then they work together to create their own pro-democracy advocacy campaign.

When they asked if I could run a workshop on the topic of transitional justice in just 2 days time, I thought it was an April fool’s joke but then remembered about the so-called last minute “Asian time.” Despite the limited amount of time I had to prepare, I am always keen to teach and I agreed to facilitate the workshop.

While the subject is not explicitly related to my work as an Insight Fellow, transitional justice is one of my predominant areas of interest within the field of conflict resolution and I do have experience in transitional justice. I am conversant with truth commissions because I studied the Truth and Reconciliation Commission during my semester abroad in South Africa. While in the Great Lakes region of Africa, I researched and visited gacaca hearings in Rwanda and studied other traditional methods of justice in Northern Uganda. Thanks to my experience at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and at the ICC, I am also very familiar with the processes of international criminal law.

Drawing on this academic knowledge and professional experience, I was able to pull together a full presentation and workshop on transitional justice despite the Asian timing of the invitation. The group of six young women were captivated by the subject and extremely eager to learn—so eager in fact that they refused to take a break! (For my own sake as a solo facilitator, I insisted.) This bright group was a lot of fun and just as inspirational as my other Burmese students. They had tons of questions and our discussion went way over the allotted time. It was tough when we eventually wrapped up at the end of the day, knowing that I am leaving soon and this was likely my last opportunity to teach and to work so intimately with Burmese activists.