Chapter

War crimes in Angola

Joris van Wijk

The Oxford handbook on atrocity crimes

Oxford [etc.] : Oxford University Press, 2022

p. 775-799

English

Bibliography : p. 796-799

After a war of independence against the Portuguese colonizer, Angola has known a civil war from 1975 to 2002. What could be characterized as a “proxy Cold-War” in the 1970s and 1980s, turned in the 1990s into a “greed”-based war over the control of natural resources. During the war, numerous war crimes, and arguably also crimes against humanity, were committed; an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people died as a consequence of the war and the country was infected with land mines. When a peace agreement was signed in 2002, it included a blanket amnesty for all former warring parties. Based on a literature review and original empirical fieldwork, this chapter describes in particular why and how—in the absence of any accountability mechanisms—alternative strategies to truth seeking, reconciliation, commemoration, or memorialization have only to a limited extent been adopted. Angola’s peace process is a textbook example of “illiberal peacebuilding.”

• The Oxford handbook on atrocity crimes / edited by Barbora Holá, Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira and Maartje Weerdesteijn