I am currently conducting research in Sierra Leone, a place in which I have done research intermittently since 2004. In this current research, I am dealing with demands for 'victim-centred' approaches to justice, which forces one to face squarely the challenge of asserting who is a victim or identifying what victims 'want', particularly as an outsider to a society. I have, not surprisingly, been told at least two different things by local interlocutors: 1, that everyone who was here during the conflict is in some sense a victim, and 2, that victims are those who suffered specific, largely physical, harms. The question is more than an abstract one, given that reparations programmes, with limited funds, have been initiated, albeit in a somewhat messy fashion.
So who is a victim? And what about victims who do not want to declare themselves as such, because of fears of social ostracization? How to assess what victims want, then, when they are a diverse set of groups and individuals? And where groups are not well-organized or politically empowered (with the exception of the amputees association, this is the case in Sierra Leone), to whom do you listen? Donors and international organizations providing funds and supporting a national reparations programme? Government programmers? Local NGOs monitoring and criticizing such programmes? Or last but certainly not least, comments from individual victims, which may or may not be representative?