Ecological Concerns and Transitional Justice in Africa

Abstract

Why is the rate of growth in environmental transitional justice in Africa outpaced by
what obtains at the global level? This is the research question answered by this article.
The article affirmed that the human person has been dominant in all the stages in the
development of transitional justice. It further asserted that interests and involvements in
each of these stages are remote from ecological concerns. It is true that the international
justice system is not silent on environmental issues and that concern for the environment
is not lacking in the African regional justice system, however, the concern is muted in
the 2019 African Union Transitional Justice Policy and in the history of truth and
reconciliation commissions and war crimes tribunals in Africa. The article gave two
reasons why the rate of growth in environmental transitional justice in Africa is outpaced by what is obtainable at the global level: the people-driven nature of transitional
justice and the poverty of ecological and transitional justice concerns in the African
colonial-inherited conception of law.