International Encyclopedia of Restorative Justice Africa Volume Officially Released After Years Of Academic Collaboration

After several years of academic collaboration with international colleagues, the International Encyclopedia of Restorative Justice-Africa Volume has been officially released.

The maiden volume, published by Brill, brings together leading scholars and practitioners to explore how restorative justice is imagined, practiced, and contested across the African continent.

The volume features contributions from more than twenty jurisdictions and thematic perspectives, examining how restorative justice has developed within diverse legal, cultural and political contexts while highlighting the enduring legacies of colonialism and the significance of Indigenous justice traditions, legal pluralism and contemporary innovations.

It includes Indigenous justice mechanisms like gacaca and mato oput, alongside contemporary innovations responding to intercommunal and interpersonal conflict, war crimes, and offending behaviour.

A chapter on Restorative Justice in Nigeria, authored by Don John Omale, Comfort Chinyere Ani and Kelvin Ugwuoke, is included in the volume.

The chapter highlights the historical development of restorative justice in Nigeria, noting the conceptual transitions and reform initiatives that led to the full development and implementation of restorative justice programmes in the Nigerian criminal justice system in 2019.

It discusses the roles played by academia and NGOs in the legislative proceedings of the bills and the enactments of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA, 2015) and the Nigerian Correctional Service Act (NCSA, 2019) that mainstreamed the use of restorative justice in criminal matters in Nigeria.

The potential challenges to effective implementation of restorative justice across the criminal justice system in the country are also discussed, as well as the strategic plans for national roll out of restorative justice programmes.

The volume’s editors include Kerry Clamp, Hema Hargovan, Julena Jumbe Gabagambi and Don John O. Omale. According to the publisher’s description, the book reframes restorative justice not as a technical solution, but as a deeply relational, culturally grounded response to harm rooted in customary justice and histories of resilience and repair in the wake of colonisation. It challenges Global North assumptions and centres African knowledge systems in global debates.

The chapters demonstrate that restorative justice in Africa cannot be understood through a single lens, examining responses to interpersonal offending, post-conflict reconstruction, transitional justice, child justice, community reconciliation and legal reform, revealing both the diversity of African experience and the common commitment to repairing harm, restoring relationships and strengthening communities.

The volume is published in the Studies in Restorative Justice series, volume 12/E-2, first edition, with 446 pages, and is available in hardback under ISBN 9789004743151.

The publication date is listed as 17 September 2026 by some retailers, while pre-order alerts indicated an August 2026 release. The book is published by Brill and is available for purchase through the De Gruyter Brill website and other booksellers.

For the whole volume, readers can visit the Brill website at the link provided by the publisher. The Nigeria chapter is available for perusal as part of the volume.