Thin Sympathy

This book considers the relative utility of thin sympathy" through the lens of Uganda, where conflict and division have festered for more than half a century. The book proposes a hypothesis that suggests that the development of even a very rudimentary understanding among individuals from each of the different factions and groups-of what has happened, of the basic facts of the other's suffering-could be the necessary condition for promoting not just peaceful coexistence but a society's ability to move forward together. And although many assume that this understanding already exists, the author's work and the work of others has clearly demonstrated that there is a significant gap in that kind of perception across different groups. In Uganda, for example,very few people know much of anything about what happened in Northern Uganda between the government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, and they know still less about the difficult experiences of northerners during the conflict. In fact, there is little cross-group knowledge between the 65 different ethnocultural groups of each other's experiences. Getting past that knowledge gap would allow them to at least understand why something like transitional justice might be necessary"--