Large-scale story listening for meaningful post-conflict reparations

As part of the ICC-ordered reparations process following the conviction of Dominic Ongwen for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Voices That Count was commissioned by the Trust Fund for Victims to conduct a large-scale, story-based baseline study in northern Uganda. The goal was to help shape a reparations programme grounded in the lived realities of victims—one that reflects their own definitions of recognition, healing, and justice.

What were the key steps?

We designed and implemented a large-scale narrative inquiry using SenseMaker®, by collecting over 1,000 anonymous microstories from people affected by Dominic Ongwen’s crimes on how these atrocities still impact people’s lives today, 20 years after the main attacks. A significant number of young people born during or after the armed conflict were included in the story-listening.  Each story was first interpreted by the person who told it.

Local community members were trained to serve as story collectors. As many victims have been stigmatized—especially former child soldiers and women abducted for sexual slavery (both forcefully conscripted by Ongwen’s rebel army) —a sensitive, compassionate approach was key for people to open up and share how the atrocities still affect their lives.

SenseMaker® combines narrative insight with data analytics. In practice, this means it's possible to extract, visualize, and present key patterns emerging from the stories, tailored to the overarching questions the project aims to answer.

We then invited community members, cultural and religious leaders, psychosocial workers, NGOs, and institutional actors to:

• examine emerging patterns and contextualize them
• read individual stories to gain deeper insight into victims’ needs
• recommend reparations measures based on the stories and corresponding numerical data

This multi-stakeholder group also identified additional themes, needs and reparation measures that might otherwise have been missed.

What added value does this approach bring?

• Deeper insight, not just more information. Stories brought clarity about how people continue to experience harm, decades after the initial atrocities. They also highlighted what victims view as meaningful ways to rebuild their lives and communities.
• Community ownership. Involvement in shaping the questions, collecting the stories, and interpreting the results helped ensure the process was seen as legitimate and trustworthy.
• Practical input for action. Findings informed the ICC’s Implementation Plan and created a baseline for tracking long-term impact.
• Transgenerational insights. Many younger participants described transgenerational harm—including disrupted futures, broken family structures, inherited trauma and lasting stigma. Listening beyond the directly affected generation added critical nuances to better understand the whole picture of the harm done.
• Shared understanding for local actors. Reading stories together helped stakeholders with different roles and perspectives find common ground and align around what mattered most to affected communities.

What can we learn from the Uganda story for other complex contexts?

This approach isn’t only for post-conflict settings. It is valuable anywhere complexity is high, change is ongoing, or conventional tools fall short. Especially where lived experience is central to understanding what's happening.

Some practical applications include:

• Strategic planning in complex environments, where insight from the ground is essential.
• Organizational change when trust is low or cultures clash. Stories surface what is often left unsaid.
• Community engagement where power is uneven and standard surveys don’t reach everyone.
• Monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) in development work, where direct outcomes may be hard to measure. This approach reveals how change is felt, what is working, and where gaps remain.
• Innovation and co-design processes that must stay grounded in everyday realities.

What turns this from a method into a game changer?

What makes the approach powerful—besides the value of the stories themselves—is how they are gathered, interpreted, and turned into action:

• It combines insight and oversight. Stories include self-interpretation, making the underlying meaning clearer. Patterns across micro-narratives reveal what is emerging and why it matters.
• Blind spots are reduced. Because interpretation happens at the source, there’s less filtering through external assumptions. This supports epistemic justice—the right of people to define their own experience.
• Real-time learning is possible. Patterns surface quickly, supporting timely adjustments and better decisions.
• Accessible visuals. Results are clear and usable without needing technical expertise. Leadership, teams, and communities can act on them directly.
• Scalable and nuanced. Large volumes of stories can be collected without losing context or complexity. The process keeps both human depth and statistical value.

For organizations working in complexity—across public systems, social change, or the private sector—this approach supports a shift from consultation to real engagement, from input to insight.
It helps surface what’s hard to say. And brings into focus what’s easy to overlook.