In a fragile context, civil society may include both actors that aim at improving peoples’
lives or groups that seek to dominate by violence. For the purposes of this thesis,
38 following Posner’s (2003: 237) account on civil society’s role in a failed state context, civil society is best defined as actors that "might play a useful role in strengthening government institutions and improving peoples’ living conditions in failed states” rather than actors that aim at “destroying the state of profiting from its weakness”. As such, civil society holds an especially important role in substituting state services, which are – in the case of failing states – often absent. According to Posner, in such contexts the ideal of civil society as a “watch-dog” of the state by conducting advocacy work becomes irrelevant, as institutions are too weak to deliver demands.
Within transitional justice processes, the role of civil society as a “watch-dog” remains debatable. In proposing a starting point for an analysis of the dynamics of civil society engagement in transitional justice processes, Hovil & Okello (2011) address the question regarding the extent to which civil society promotes the demands of the groups it claims to represent. They note that even as civil society is, by definition, separate from the state, its actions are mainly informed by responses to state behavior (2011: 336). Therefore, Hovil & Okello call for scrutiny of CSO activity, inclusiveness, and agendas in the context of transitional justice processes. They point to the varying normative standpoints that CSOs might have, especially in post-conflict contexts, where concepts such as ‘truth’
and ‘justice’ are continuously reframed through contested narratives that also lead to contested priorities of transitional justice mechanisms (ibid: 337–338). Following this point, O’Rourke’s (2008) notion cited above on the need to address inclusiveness in bottom-up approaches becomes of importance: gender justice is another dissenting narrative that needs its proponents in the formation of the agenda and objectives of transitional justice processes.
Gready and Robins (2017: 970) call for rethinking the relationship between civil society and transitional justice by considering social movements and new forms of organizing as a source of “radical pluralism in which the discourse of human rights is placed alongside other significant progressive frameworks in both defining and advancing justice”. This approach is aimed at challenging a focus on state-centered initiatives and the established connections between NGOs and transitional justice mechanisms. Instead, they call for a scrutiny of articulations of rights, justice, and politics in the Global South originating from a long history of democratization movements that challenge ‘narrow elite-led processes’: “As such, they have the potential to provide a locally informed, broad-based
39 and more democratic justice in transition, as an alternative to the institutional and often remote processes that have come to define contemporary transitional justice” (2017: 965).
This analytical framework puts emphasis on the social and political transformations that transitional justice processes could facilitate, and as such it presents an opportunity to consider gender justice as one “progressive framework in both defining and advancing justice”. But it fails to give any attention to the role that CSOs and the “old civil society”
might have in relation to transitional gender justice. I have brought up above, that feminists have pointed to putting civil society to the forefront of transitional justice initiatives in order to question a one-size-fits-all approach where Western liberalism plays a constitutive role. If we consider Posner’s notion on the limits that a fragile and failed state context set for civil society’s ability to function, it may hinder the advocacy work of CSOs in relation to transitional justice processes. Thus, in such a context it may well be that the ‘old civil society’ has a strong role in advancing gender justice. I will present evidence for this later in the results chapter.
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Until now, I have aimed at providing a conceptual and theoretical framework with which to critically approach the EU’s support for transitional (gender) justice in Mali. I have pointed to scholarly work that argues that the EU's approach for supporting transitional justice follows the liberal peacebuilding paradigm. Critical feminist accounts on transitional justice have revealed the negligence in mainstream approaches to transitional justice in relation to women’s rights and gendered impacts of transitional justice processes. Post-colonial studies, then again, guide us to question the a-historical universalist approach and turn our gaze towards the coloniality of state structures and relations between actors supporting transitional justice in post-colonial contexts. As there is no established body of literature that could be referred as (post-colonial) feminist theory of transitional justice, this study is a contribution to discussions on feminist approaches to study transitional justice, and the support that the European Union is giving to transitional justice in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In order to provide with a meaningful transformation for women through transitional justice, Ní Aoláin calls for “subjecting every practice, mechanism, and reform activity to intense gender analysis, viewing every single practice (and the change that is sought around it) as gendered activity” (2019: 153–154). With some limitations – resources
40 being one of those – I set out on a path to provide my modest contribution to the mission Ní Aoláin sets for scholars and actors in the field of transitional justice. Before presenting the case of Mali, I introduce the research methodology used in the collection and analysis of data.