On Friday 24 May 2024, the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF) held a webinar in commemoration of ‘Africa Day’ with the theme “Centering Survivors in African TJ Processes: Importance, Opportunities and Challenges.” 

Despite Africa’s growing epistemic agency on transitional justice and five years after the African Union Transitional Justice Policy was launched and adopted, the Transitional Justice process in most African countries still leave much to be desired. A quick scan of ongoing transitional justice processes on the continent would reveal that one of the most obvious failings is the minimal level of importance that accrues to victims and survivors of the conflicts and violations that TJ processes are meant to address. ATJLF was established in 2020 to address this gap, among other things.

Since 2020, ATJLF has funded 49 survivor-led and community-based organisations implementing transformative transitional justice interventions that align with the values of the AUTJP. Since 2020, we have provided 85 grants totaling $4.6 million dollars. However, the gap between where we are and where we need to be remains huge. It is therefore clear that only concerted efforts by stakeholders driven by a common knowledge of the centrality of survivors to the effectiveness of transitional justice processes will make a difference.

Held against the backdrop of the founding of the present day African Union on May 25, 1963, there has been a significant expansion in the celebration of ‘Africa Day’, Beyond liberation, the webinar was designed to celebrate the milestones associated with transitional justice developments across the continent while convening a panel to discuss the mainstreaming of the role and perspectives of survivors in African Transitional Justice processes. To set the tone for this conversation, survivors of the Sierra Leonean civil war and the dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh in the Gambia shared mind boggling testimonies about the extent of the exclusion from TJ processes. The testimonies were followed by a panel discussion moderated by ATJLF’s Programs and Communications Lead, Pelumi Obisesan-Aina.

The panelists were Dr. Dorcas Ettang, Associate Professor at the International Centre of Non-violence -Durban University of Technology, John Caulker, Executive Director, Famboul Tok, Hauwa Shaffi Nuhu, Senior Editor, HumAngle and Allan Ngari, Africa Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch. Given that the academia, practitioners, and journalists were represented on the panel, the discussion around how to ensure that the variant of TJ been practiced in Africa has empowering outcomes for survivors of violence was robust.

The panel also ended with closing remarks from the survivors in the webinar.