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This is a collection of texts written by P. Vincke over a period of some twenty years, since his first experience in the judicial and legal world of crimes of genocide and against humanity in 1998, when he was briefly head of mission for Avocats Sans Frontières in Rwanda, then director of RCN Justice & Démocratie, a human rights and justice development NGO in Belgium and Central Africa, and subsequently consultant for cooperation agencies and the European Union. These insights and reflections have often found their way into the editorials of the RCN newsletter. They describe trials, ask questions about the meaning of justice as an actor in the reconstruction of societies and individuals that have been wounded, about the expertise and ambitions of development players, and about the policies of donors. The legitimacy of support actions often refers to the need to promote local justice, and the legitimacy of justice often refers to its humanizing function. The author persists in believing that German-Roman law is ill-suited to the realities of populations that are mostly - and not partly, as some would have us believe - vulnerable.
