The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) was launched in the year 2000, in the wake of South Africa´s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The aim was to ensure that lessons learnt from South Africa´s transition from apartheid to democracy were taken into account as the nation moved ahead.
Today, the Institute helps to build fair, inclusive and democratic societies in Africa through carefully selected engagements and interventions. It contributes to post-conflict stability, good governance and human security through programmes that promote political reconciliation and social and economic justice across Africa. With its base and origin in South Africa, it continues to learn from the South African experience of transition and explores projects and partnerships that will deepen the efforts to build fair, inclusive and democratic societies in this country, but also the rest of the continent.
In preparation for its Strategy 2022–2025, the IJR conducted an extensive horizon-scanning exercise to distill existing and emerging drivers of change that will shape the contexts within which we are likely to work in the course of this four-year period. This will ensure that we remain relevant, and help us identify our strategic priorities that will drive our partnerships.
Vision
The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation is an African organisation that is known for:
Building fair, democratic and inclusive societies.
Mission
The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation enables African and global communities to promote reconciliation and to apply human-centred approaches to socio-economic justice.
IJR Theory of change
The IJR directs its energies towards the building of societies that are fair, inclusive, democratic and peaceful, in contexts that are currently afflicted by conflict or where societies continue to grapple with the historical legacy of these conflicts.
We pursue this long-term organisational goal in the belief that change, particularly change aimed at the transformation of entire societies, is systemic. As such, successful outcomes need not be, and rarely occur, in direct proportion to the human or financial resources that are allocated to them. A staff of 40 and a limited budget will not go far in addressing the sheer scale of the challenges that we seek to address across the African continent. Instead, we operate with the firm conviction that our value addition to the societies where we work is dependent on the IJR’s capacity to work collaboratively, innovate and identify catalytic leverage points that exist within these societies to bring about exponential change within their social systems.
By implication, our approach underscores our basic conviction that social change of the kind that we pursue must be people-centred, locally owned and rooted in the societies that we serve. The scope for and contours of change resides within them. It is not our role to impose grand external designs of what fair, inclusive, democratic and peaceful societies should be looking like in practice. Instead, the IJR views its role to be that of experienced facilitator of organic change processes that are shaped by the contextual realities and requirements of our stakeholders. We support and nurture the agency of societies to craft inclusive solutions for the unique challenges they face. This perspective on change, which underscores local ownership, is grounded in more than two decades of experience in various transitional societies across the African continent and, in recent years, further abroad.
With research and dialogue counting among our core strengths, the IJR’s primary contributions revolve around context analysis, the diagnosis of key leverage points in conflict systems, and the creation of inclusive dialogue platforms that engage with these issues on an informed basis. To support this, the IJR has prioritised five concrete outcomes which, separately and combined, are intended to reinforce the pursuit of our long-term goal in the course of the next four years. The types of participants we work with to achieve this are, among others: local communities, civil society organisations, educational institutions, think tanks, government departments, intergovernmental organisations, international development agencies, the diplomatic community, and corporate business entities.
Principles
The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation subscribe to the following principles in developing and delivering its interventions:
TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY: To ensure accountability, IJR’s intentions are open to partners and stakeholders and it communicates its intentions continuously and clearly. Policy and management decisions are clear in terms of their rationale and context, and placed on record for all in the organisation to see. As such, IJR and its staff remain accountable to the Institute’s founding principles and all stakeholders with whom it partners, especially those in society who were rendered more vulnerable by the historical injustices IJR is assisting society to address.
INTEGRITY: IJR strives for congruency between the national ideals that bequeathed it with the historical legitimacy it needed when it was formed and its current role in the society. As an organisation that strongly advocates ideals which take a stand against corruption, fraud, systemic racism and hatred of the other, IJR’s integrity and that of its staff should be defined by unrelenting pursuit of these honourable ideals in all we do.
FAIRNESS & INCLUSIVITY: IJR actively encourages just and equal participation in its internal and external interventions. IJR aims to foster a democratic environment for its interventions, which is free from discrimination and stereotyping, as well as which enables open-mindedness and the sharing of a diversity of perspectives.
CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT: The IJR approach is to develop capacity in everything it does – from internal organisational activities to engagement with its project communities.
Strategic Objectives and Outcomes
1.
Participants have the capacity to use contextually appropriate transitional justice mechanisms
2.
Participants are motivated to enable fairness, inclusivity and peace
3.
Participants take actions that lead to sustained peace, justice and reconciliation
4.
Communities are more resilient, reconciled and socially cohesive
5.
Systems and policies enable the realisation of fair, inclusive, democratic and peaceful societies