Technology, Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: A Theoretical Framework for Digital Tools in Documentation, Dialogue and Reconciliation After Violent Conflict

Abstract

Societies emerging from violent conflict now face that past with tools that earlier transitions did not have. Smartphones record atrocities as they happen, civil-society groups build digital archives, courts weigh user-generated evidence, peace processes use online consultations and AI-assisted analysis, and reintegration programmes keep digital records of former fighters. This theoretical paper builds a framework for judging what these tools can and cannot do for transitional justice and peacebuilding. It draws on four bodies of work: transitional justice and international criminal justice, the emerging field of digital peacebuilding, the epistemology of synthetic media, and the critical data studies of humanitarianism. From these it separates three functions that the literature often treats as one. Documentation establishes what happened. Dialogue lets divided groups communicate. Reconciliation changes the relationships between them. The paper argues that digital tools greatly strengthen documentation, help dialogue only under specific conditions, and cannot by themselves produce reconciliation, which remains a slow, relational and largely offline process. It also identifies two new vulnerabilities: the erosion of evidentiary trust by synthetic media, and the exposure of victims through the data collected about them. The paper derives seven propositions and anchors them in the reintegration of former Boko Haram associates in North-East Nigeria. It closes with implications for transitional-justice institutions, peace-process designers, donors and researchers. It argues that the authority of digital evidence has become institutional, so that in an age of synthetic media trust attaches not to the image but to the institution that can vouch for it, which threatens to widen the gap between conflicts that attract verification capacity and those that do not. It further argues that the legitimacy of digital transitional justice depends on how it treats those it documents, so that victims' data must be governed with their participation and protected against exposure, or the record built in their name becomes another source of harm.