In Part I, an inductive perspective was adopted in order to describe the legal and institutional setting of how legacies of large-scale human rights abuses have been dealt with (and are being dealt with). This empirical approach was based on an analysis of legal sources, but also described how as a result of other than legal determinants the past violence was dealt with in practice. It has become clear that what was actually done in the name of justice and remedial action sometimes amounted to injustice (or was, at the very least, perceived by many as being unjust and as a way of inflicting more oppressive violence) and most of the time amounted to a failure to render justice and even to merely reveal the truth about the past. This Part II will focus more in depth on the role of the legal component of Burundi's transitional justice experience. To what extent did legal sources shape Burundi's transitional justice process? And to what extent was law itself instrumentalised, shaped in accordance with the desired political end and made to fit the new balance of power? This obviously raises questions about the limits of both international and domestic law in ensuring truth, accountability, reparation and reconciliation in transitional settings. It also raises questions about the relationship between transitional justice and the establishment (or re-introduction) of the rule of law in transitional States.

GENERAL OVERVIEW

Burundi's transitional justice law, policy and practice, as described in Part I, was based on four input factors, the combination of which has determined the way in which legacies of large-scale human rights abuses have been dealt in the case of Burundi. Each of the input factors constitutes a source of Burundi's transitional justice process and can be visualised through the four Fields (A, B, C and D) in the following scheme.

The central Field is the result of the combined input (visualised by the four arrows) from the four individual Fields. Before focusing on the two ‘northern’ Fields, some general comments should be made on the above scheme. First, it has become clear from the description in Part I that the impact of the individual Fields has varied over time. Compared to Burundi's transitional justice experience in the first three decades after its independence, the impact of Fields A and C has generally increased since the early nineties.