Paper short abstract:

Landmine victims' representatives in Uganda and Ethiopia contribute to peacebuilding by supporting physical and psycho-social rehabilitation in mine action that address basic needs and reparations. Survivor agency contributes to peace by rehabilitation unencumbered by discourses of past grievances.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the agency of landmine victims' representatives in mine action rehabilitation interventions and monitoring in Uganda and Ethiopia. This progressively expanding field provides critical understanding of peacebuilding. Mine victims as professional leaders and expert participants, valuable to the legitimacy of peace work in situations of complex fragility are here discussed in relation to their inclusion as 'local' civil society empowerment. Conflict victims are gradually joining peace consultations and dialogue. Victim leaders are irregularly represented in mine action coordination structures mechanisms that overlap with post-conflict redress and reparations mechanisms. It is an increasingly recognized normative feature of the so called 'victim assistance' component of mine action. With international conventions as incentives, victim participation is broadly informed by conflict transformation theory and the notion of 'bottom-up' local perspectives, increasing consideration of how peacebuilding and conflict settlements seek pragmatic engagement beyond belligerents and elites.

Physical and psycho-social rehabilitation for landmine survivors, a core aspect of mine action, plays an underexplored role in building positive peace. It offers a space for interrogation into the overlapping basic needs and reparative post conflict (re)connectors in medical, security and social spheres. Yet, international rehabilitative interventions foregrounding survivor agency and communicating narratives of post-conflict solidarity have to be vigilant of tendencies to obfuscate prevailing ruptures or promote the "difference and otherness" of victims. Victim participation can contribute to rehabilitation of minority and highly marginalized groups, of combatants and civilians from opposing sides, unencumbered by discourses derived from past grievances.