Healing Justice is an emerging political organising framework that addresses the systemic injustice and intergenerational harm experienced by oppressed and marginalised peoples. This seminar presents insights from research that explored its relevance for feminist movement-building in different African contexts, and how collective healing could be productively incorporated within feminist spaces.
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Chair
Jean Kemitare, Programme Director, Urgent Action Fund-Africa UAF-Africa, Uganda
Speakers
- Masa Amir, Knowledge Leadership Manager, Urgent Action Fund-Africa, Egypt
- Dr. Awa Diop, Researcher, Healing Justice Research, Universities of Ziguinchor and Dakar, Senegal
- Dr. Jackie Shaw, Principal Investigator – Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK
- Dr. Danai Mupotsa, Researcher, Healing Justice Research, Senior Lecturer, Department of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
- Olga Kithumbu, Researcher, Healing Justice Research, Sociology Department, University of Kinshasa
- Melissa Wainaina, Feminist Republik
About the event
Healing justice is an emerging political organising framework that aims to address the systemic injustice and harm experienced by marginalised peoples that is rooted in oppressive histories, intergenerational trauma, and structural violence. It recognises that these damaging factors generate collective traumas, which manifest in negative physical, mental–emotional, and spiritual effects for activists and their movements. Following its transformational intentions, healing justice is anticipated to involve a diverse range of healing and political organising practices, and should be contextualised. This provided the rationale for a research project, funded by Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa), and collaboratively led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and UAF-Africa, in partnership with the Feminist Republik (FR), on the relevance of Healing Justice to feminist activism in Africa.
This research project aimed to understand what Healing Justice means to Women Humans Rights Defenders (WHRDs) and feminist activists in different African contexts, and to explore how and in what circumstances pathways to collective healing could be supported as an approach to feminist movement-building. This seminar presents the first insights from this research as published in the IDS working paper– Contextualising Healing Justice as a Feminist Organising Framework in Africa and the research report An African Feminist Exploration of Healing Justice .
In this event, after introducing Healing Justice and the research background, some of the researchers and collaborators will present what we learned as encompassed in two branches of a provisional healing justice framework, which was generated during the research:
- Healing justice involves understanding and addressing the systemic injustice and intergenerational harm experienced by African WHRDs and feminist activists in context.
- Healing justice involves changing the nature and practices of feminist organising and movement-building work.
This framework suggests the importance of (i) analysing structural violence in context, and its relationship to suitable healing approaches ii) transforming the cultures, spaces, and relations of feminist activism; (ii) transforming feminist-movement work through incorporating collective healing practices; and (iii) transforming organisational structures and support provided to movements.
By attending this seminar, you will gain knowledge about the prioritisation of Healing Justice as a radical and critical strategy for activism, and the current discussions about how it could generate more nurturing and inclusive environments for feminist activism, and, ultimately, guide pathways towards more sustainable and effective feminist organising and support to WHRDs and feminist activists in diverse African contexts.
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