The Cost of Indifference in Transitional Justice Processes

A Rat Trap Story

Back in December, during a peacebuilding workshop I attended, I encountered a simple, yet impactful folklore that has remained with me ever since. It tells the story of a rat that discovers a trap placed inside a house. Alarmed by the danger, the rat rushes to seek help from the other animals nearby, including the chicken, the goat, and the cow, hoping they can assist in removing the trap. However, each of them dismisses the warning, insisting that it is not their problem.

Life continues as normal until the trap eventually catches a snake. While trying to deal with it, the owner of the house is bitten and falls seriously ill. What began as an individual warning quickly becomes a collective crisis. The chicken is sacrificed to prepare food for the sick woman. As relatives and neighbors arrive to offer support, the goat is slaughtered to feed the visitors. Eventually, after the woman passes away, the cow is also slaughtered to provide food for those attending the funeral. What initially appeared distant and irrelevant becomes shared suffering.

In the story, indifference appears in the moment each animal decides that the warning is not their concern. This same logic helps us understand how indifference operates in transitional justice, especially among young people.

Indifference in Transitional Justice

Transitional justice refers to the range of processes and mechanisms used to address large-scale human rights violations and injustices that occur during periods of conflict, authoritarian rule, or political violence. While confronting the legacies of past abuses, transitional justice also seeks to lay the foundation for a more just, inclusive, and peaceful society. Its core pillars include: truth-seeking, accountability, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence, pursued through a variety of formal and informal mechanisms. These processes aim to rebuild trust, strengthen social cohesion, and create conditions that help prevent the repetition of violence.

Indifference in transitional justice refers to a lack of engagement, concern, or participation in processes designed to address past injustices. It appears when individuals or communities remain disconnected from these efforts, which are meant to involve all groups within society. Over time, sustained indifference may also lead to apathy, where individuals become emotionally detached and lose interest in engaging with justice processes altogether.

The African Union Transitional Justice Policy (hereafter AUTJP) emphasizes that transitional justice processes should be nationally driven, rooted in local realities, and inclusive of all segments of society. It particularly highlights the importance of meaningful participation and the inclusion of groups that are often marginalized, including youth.¹ By prioritizing local ownership and inclusivity, the policy seeks to strengthen legitimacy and foster broader societal engagement in transitional justice processes.

Understanding Youth Indifference in Transitional Justice Processes

Youth indifference in transitional justice is best understood as the outcome of multiple, overlapping conditions rather than a single cause. While many international normative frameworks formally recognize youth participation in peacebuilding processes, and more broadly across various spheres of life,² this does not always translate into meaningful decision-making power. Participation often remains largely symbolic, with youth included more to signal inclusivity than to meaningfully influence decision-making. As highlighted in a policy brief by the African Youth for Transitional Justice (AY4TJ) Platform and Impunity Watch, youth consultations, where they occur, are often ad hoc or symbolic, lacking the continuity, structure, and influence needed for genuine participation.³

Indifference may also emerge even where opportunities exist. Many young people did not directly experience the conflicts or injustices that transitional justice seeks to address. This generational distance can create a sense of disconnection, where justice processes are seen as tied to events of the past and therefore distant from their present realities. As a result, some may perceive these processes as less relevant to their own lives or immediate concerns.

Furthermore, mistrust in institutions may reinforce disengagement. In many contexts, young people have experienced repeated promises of reform and justice that are announced but not efficiently implemented. This can contribute to what is often described as "justice fatigue" — a perception that participation does not necessarily translate into meaningful change. In such contexts, indifference may be understood less as apathy and more as the development of prejudiced expectations of limited impact.

Why Youth Indifference Persists in Transitional Justice Processes

In many African countries, youth participation remains limited, or reactive rather than sustained and influential. A policy brief by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and Impunity Watch,⁴ drawing on focus group discussions and interviews with youth in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and South Sudan, finds that despite being the most populous age group and heavily affected by conflict, young people continue to be excluded from policy and decision-making spaces shaping transitional justice and national development processes. The brief further highlights that this exclusion is reinforced by negative social narratives portraying youth as incapable or disengaged, gender norms that marginalize young women, and weak accountability in the implementation of youth-inclusive policies — all of which undermine meaningful youth participation in transitional justice processes.⁵

This evidence suggests that youth indifference may not primarily stem from apathy, but from structural exclusion and limited meaningful engagement. In many contexts, young people actively engage in issues that directly affect their lives, including unemployment, insecurity, corruption, and governance challenges, often through civic movements, advocacy, and digital platforms. Their actions demonstrate that participation increases when issues are perceived as directly affecting their realities. When transitional justice processes fail to establish this connection, they risk appearing distant, even when the challenges young people face originate from the same historical context that transitional justice seeks to address. Without accessible communication and engagement, this disconnect can widen further. Storytelling, memorialization, and other accessible approaches can therefore help bridge this divide, alongside youth-friendly versions of policy documents, such as the simplified youth-friendly version of the AUTJP.⁶

Consequently, what appears as youth indifference persists not because young people are unwilling or incapable of engaging, but because transitional justice processes do not consistently make their relevance visible in relation to lived experience. This leads to a persistent misinterpretation of youth behaviour, where visible disengagement is treated as a lack of interest or capacity rather than as a response to structural and communicative gaps shaping participation.

As long as youth behaviour is interpreted only through visible actions rather than understood in relation to its underlying causes, this pattern will continue. Addressing it therefore requires shifting focus from judging engagement levels to improving how transitional justice is communicated, ensuring it is accessible, relatable, and clearly connected to the realities shaping young people's everyday lives.

Indifference as a Threat to Transitional Justice

Indifference can pose a serious threat to transitional justice processes because it weakens collective responsibility and undermines its core pillars. As a result, it may hinder social cohesion, legitimacy, and reconciliation. The AUTJP identifies justice and accountability as one of the indicative elements of transitional justice, emphasizing the investigation and prosecution of crimes through formal and traditional mechanisms.⁷ However, indifference of groups or institutions in these processes can create gaps that allow perpetrators to evade justice and remain free despite the harm they have caused.

The policy also emphasizes the establishment of truth and reconciliation commissions aimed at examining legacies of violent conflict and serious human rights violations, with the aim of establishing a full historical record of abuses, recognizing the experiences of victims, identifying perpetrators, and promoting healing and reconciliation within society.⁸ However, when communities become disengaged from truth-seeking processes, important experiences and testimonies may remain unheard, limiting the ability of such mechanisms to fully document past violations and acknowledge victims' suffering.

Furthermore, the AUTJP identifies the peace process as one of the indicative elements of transitional justice. According to the policy, this element is concerned with ending ongoing violence and removing threats of further violence affecting communities, while also ensuring protection and security guarantees for civilians, particularly vulnerable and marginalized groups.⁹ When people fail to respond to violence or exclusion, efforts to address them are weakened, allowing root causes to persist and undermining both current stability and future peace.

Back to the Rat Trap Story

The rat trap story illustrates that indifference is never as harmless as it initially appears. The chicken, goat, and cow assumed that the danger facing the rat did not concern them because it did not directly affect their lives. However, by ignoring the warning, they allowed the threat to grow until it eventually harmed everyone. What began as a neglected issue became a collective tragedy.

In the same way, indifference in transitional justice shows that injustice, exclusion, and unresolved grievances do not remain limited to one group or moment in time. When communities face injustice or threats, vulnerability becomes collective. If such issues are ignored, they persist and later resurface in broader and more destructive forms. Even when violence or injustice does not directly affect us, it is important to engage in peace processes, as early action helps prevent harm and contributes to long-term peace and stability.

The story further illustrates that although the danger initially threatened the rat alone, collective action to remove the threat could have prevented the chain of suffering that followed. Similarly, transitional justice is not effective when it is treated as the responsibility of only one group while others remain indifferent or excluded. Its effectiveness depends on collective participation, shared responsibility, and meaningful inclusion.

"Sustainable peace depends on collective engagement in addressing injustice and preventing its recurrence. When societies remain passive, divisions deepen and unresolved grievances continue to shape the future."

Transitional justice is therefore most effective when it is embraced as a shared responsibility rather than a limited mandate.