The politics of justice in post-conflict societies: Religious actors’ knowledge production and state-driven transitional justice in Kenya

Resulting from an interdisciplinary research project this paper argues that religious knowledges and practices can shape responses to global challenges associated with TJ in post-conflict societies and particularly in Kenya. Extant literature on TJ undervalues the role of religious actors in post-conflict societies. International actors tend to embrace state-centric approaches associated with criminal tribunals and truth commissions and put less empirical focus on religious agents as distinct players in TJ contexts. Unlike South Africa where the religious actors wholeheartedly embraced the TJ process, the Kenyan mainstream religious groups under the National Council of Churches (NCCK) and Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (SUPKEM) supported the International Criminal Court (ICC) process but remained pessimistic of the Kenyan Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC-K) in providing justice to the victims and perpetrators of violence. The paper highlights the TJ activities that religious actors engage in, how they relate to state-driven, official TJ processes and how religious knowledges and forms of knowledge production influence the form of ‘justice’ religious actors pursue in TJ process.