APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 57 Gaps in the Eastern Congo Peacebuilding Process 57 human rights abuses or whether other means, such as retributive justice or legal action—punishment or prosecution—should be adopted. The choice between pursuing prosecution or punishment of perpetrators via a legal (justice) system and pursuing reconciliation and healing through restorative justice is not an easy one and depends heavily on circumstances. In eastern Congo, some of the people thought or known to be perpetrators of human rights violations continue to hold power or are in strategic positions to obstruct advancement of the envisioned reconciliation and national healing process. Given this situation, restorative justice may be the only realistic option. Those who support this view argue that in such contested situations, reconciliation and healing through restorative justice can help a society turn the page and bring people together in a way a legal system might not be able to do in dealing with gross human rights violations.60 If restorative justice can help, a commission could provide space for ‘truth, justice and forgiveness to meet, where concerns for exposing what happened and letting it go in favour of renewed relationships are validated and embraced’.61 The process should be organized throughout the country at all levels: individual to individual, family to family, community to community, militia to militia, militias to people, and national armed forces to civilians, and so on. The commission must integrate grass-root understanding of peace and conflict in trying to ameliorate the damage caused. The process needs also to involve reparations or restitution and resettlement of displaced families, which goes hand in hand with the rehabilitation of destroyed or abandoned infrastructure and amenities, especially schools, health facilities, and water resources. The truth commission should be led and organized by civil society, if not by religious leaders given their social influence and moral authority in the east and the country in general. At the least, with meaningful engagement by civil society and the public required for successful national healing and reconciliation, civil society could monitor implementation of the process. Their witness would lend legitimacy to the process and reinforce the principle of a transformation-oriented, bottom-up approach toward seeking sustainable and transformative peace. Although the commission should not be led by the government or be government-oriented, due to some government actors being accused of human rights violations, its success nonetheless depends in part on the political will and involvement of the Congo government, which should supply funding (in partnership with the international community) and secure the authority of the commission through a bill passed by parliament and enacted into law. Such an act should empower the commission to establish the time period to be covered by its work, determine the nature of human rights abuses to be investigated, and assess the social and economic effects of the abuses and make recommendations, including on preventive and health-promoting approaches, counseling and healing programs, and community interventions. The quality and credibility of the work of the commission, and the legitimacy of the outcomes, would largely depend on how independent it is and the seriousness of the commissioners. 60. Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York, Doubleday, 1999); Pamela Machakanja, National Healing and Reconciliation in Zimbabwe: Challenges and Opportunities (Cape Town, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2010). 61. Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness (Boston, Beacon Press, 1998), 17.