Transitional justice: testing the waters in the Lake Chad Basin

This report by the Institute for Security Studies assesses the applicability of transitional justice tools in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB), specifically in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. It explores how these mechanisms can address human rights abuses resulting from violent extremism and the Boko Haram crisis, emphasizing the need for a balance between restorative and retributive justice tailored to national and local contexts.

• Countries within the Lake Chad Basin are at varying stages of developing and conceptualising transitional justice tools, necessitating a combination of a regional approach and country-specific models that account for national peculiarities.
• There is a significant gap in community understanding of transitional justice, with many conflating it with Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) processes. While DDR is viewed as perpetrator-centric, transitional justice is intended to be victim-centric, balancing social cohesion with accountability for mass human rights violations.
• The timing and sequencing of transitional justice mechanisms must be influenced by the specific stage of the conflict cycle in each country. Some communities, particularly in Cameroon, perceive a transition toward a post-intervention phase, which may provide an opportune moment for peacebuilding.
• Across the LCB, there is a general inclination toward restorative justice over retributive justice due to the structural and administrative failures of domestic judicial systems. In Nigeria, for example, mass arbitrary arrests and inadequate legal aid have hindered the state's ability to adjudicate terrorism cases.
• Local and religious conflict resolution mechanisms are frequently preferred by rural populations over formal legal proceedings. Examples include the use of oaths of non-recidivism on the Qur'an in Cameroon, the 'diah' practice of community compensation in Chad, and the 'sulhu' mediation process in north-eastern Nigeria.
• The report recommends that LCB governments improve governance to address the root causes of violent extremism, such as structural inequalities and inequitable resource management, as a transitional justice framework alone cannot resolve these perennial challenges.

APA

Institute for Security Studies (2022). Transitional justice: testing the waters in the Lake Chad Basin. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/WAR-39.pdf

Chicago

Institute for Security Studies. Transitional justice: testing the waters in the Lake Chad Basin. 2022. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/WAR-39.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Security Studies |title=Transitional justice: testing the waters in the Lake Chad Basin |date=April 2022 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/WAR-39.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforsecuritystudies2022transitional, author = {{Institute for Security Studies}}, title = {{Transitional justice: testing the waters in the Lake Chad Basin}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2022}, month = apr, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/WAR-39.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }