Atlas›Domain XV · Nature, philosophy, social & rites of passage›Guide 071
Guide XV-071

Customary reconciliation: sulha and mato oput

A 34 · L 49 · M 1721 interventions in the Trinity explorer
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[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: sulha as described by Irani (2000, drawing on Irani and Funk 1998) for Lebanon, Jordan and Palestinian communities, and by Lang (2002) from fieldwork in Galilee towns and villages; mato oput as described by the Liu Institute, Gulu District NGO Forum and Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) reports prepared with Ker Kwaro Acholi (Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007) and a 2017 JRP account. Practice varies by country, village and clan; these are outlines, not a single canonical rite.

Sulha (settlement; the closing reconciliation is musalaha) and Acholi mato oput ("drinking the bitter root") are customary, community-held processes of repair after killings and other grave harms. Neither is a psychotherapy, and neither belongs to therapists: authority sits with respected mediators (the jaha, village elders and notables) in sulha, and with clan elders, rwodi (chiefs) and the cultural institution Ker Kwaro Acholi in mato oput [source: Irani 2000; Lang 2002; Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007]. Both treat harm as an event between groups (families, clans), not only between individuals. In sulha, a killing damages the injured family's sharaf (honour), and the process repairs that honour so that revenge is no longer required [source: Lang 2002]. Mato oput rests on voluntary admission, truth, compensation and restoration of harmonious life (ber bedo) [source: Baines et al. 2005]. Spiritual beliefs are part of how change is understood within Acholi tradition: elders describe cen, an angry spirit of the wronged dead, as bringing misfortune on the offender's clan until the wrong is ritually put right, and describe the bitter drink as washing away impurity (attributed beliefs, not clinical claims) [source: Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007].

The psychotherapist's role is supportive and adjacent: understanding what the process means to a client and family, assessing safety and voluntariness, preparing and accompanying a client who is a member of an injured or responsible family (or a returnee, a mediator, or a woman affected by the outcome), supporting them through long waits and after the ceremony, and coordinating with the mediators or elders only if the client wishes [synthesis]. Customary rites are not a substitute for criminal justice, safeguarding or legal advice. Related guides: 066 family group conferencing; 073 Healing of Memories; 112 mourning rites; the gacaca guide in this family.

2. Framework

2a. The processes as their describers publish them (outline only)

Sulha [source: Irani 2000; Lang 2002]:

  • Request and truce. After a killing, the offender's male relatives approach notables to form a jaha, ideally quickly, to forestall revenge. A truce (hudna) is sought from the victim's family, covering the period when revenge is locally seen as legitimate. The offender's male kin often leave the village for a time.
  • Persuasion. If the victim's family refuses, the jaha returns repeatedly, often with more notables, using respectful, honour-laden gestures rather than argument.
  • Fact-finding and compensation. Mediators establish what happened; compensation (diya) is set by the mediators and in practice negotiated privately.
  • Public ceremony. Families meet before the community; apologies, handshaking (musafaha) under the mediators' supervision, handover of compensation before witnesses, and in Lang's account a signed written agreement witnessed by notables.
  • Closing hospitality. The offender's family drinks bitter coffee at the victim's home, followed by a shared meal (mumalaha).
  • Timescale. Lang reports that resolution typically takes months to several years; unresolved cases remain "pending" (sulha mu'allaqa), sometimes for decades.
  • Relation to the state. In the Israeli setting Lang studied, the state does not legally recognise sulha and killers remain subject to criminal law, though state actors in practice cooperate with it.

Mato oput [source: Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007; JRP 2017]:

  • Preconditions. Voluntary admission by the offender and trust between the parties and mediators; elders enforce a cooling-off period between clans to prevent revenge.
  • Mediation and truth-telling. Elders, a chief's representative or the chief establish facts through shuttle diplomacy or meetings; confession and acknowledgement, often in private within the clan; elders counsel the parties before they commit.
  • Compensation. Death compensation (culu kwor), traditionally livestock and in the displacement camps often cash equivalents, paid between clans.
  • Ceremony. The parties share a bitter drink made from the oput root; an animal is slaughtered and shared. The 2017 JRP account describes mato oput as the final step after several earlier reconciliation processes, and the ritual as binding the parties not to confront one another again.
  • Related Acholi rites named in the same reports: nyono tong gweno (stepping on an egg, a welcome-home rite used for returnees), lwongo tipu (calling home the spirit of someone killed or unburied), cleansing ceremonies, and gomo tong (bending the spear) between groups. Only these public outlines are given here; ceremony detail belongs to the elders who hold it.

2b. The therapist's work: phases [synthesis]

No source gives a session count or format for therapy alongside these processes; the phasing below is clinical synthesis.

  1. Understanding and assessment. Goal: know the client's place in the process, its meaning to them, and risks. Includes the Cultural Formulation Interview, safety and voluntariness assessment. Move on when the client's position, wishes, risks and legal situation are mapped.
  2. Preparation (if the client is taking part). Goal: informed, voluntary participation with a safety plan; coordination with mediators or elders if the client consents. Move on when the client can describe what to expect, has a support plan, and has confirmed they still want to proceed.
  3. Accompaniment through the waiting period. Goal: stabilise during months or years of truce, exile, negotiation or a pending case. Continue as long as the process stays open.
  4. Ceremony and immediate aftermath. Goal: a grounding and support plan around the day; debrief soon after.
  5. Integration. Goal: make sense of what was and was not repaired; grief, trauma treatment and reintegration work as needed. End when the client's own goals are met, or transfer to trauma-focused or grief-focused treatment where indicated.

Where the process is refused, impossible (for example, unknown victims) or collapses, phases 3 to 5 become grief and meaning-making work (see 4.18).

3. Guiding principles

  • The community holds the rite. Practical meaning: the therapist does not design, run, adapt or advise on the ceremony, and does not act as jaha or elder [synthesis; authority as described in Irani 2000; Baines et al. 2005].
  • Voluntariness is necessary but often pressured. Practical meaning: assess the client's own wish separately from family and community expectation. Lang (2002) shows that refusing a jaha is shameful and families may yield to avoid disgrace; in the JRP survey 96% of respondents said no one should be forced to take part, and forced confessions were seen as producing falsehoods [source: Lang 2002; Baines et al. 2007].
  • Safety first. Practical meaning: screen for revenge risk, retaliation after confession, exile and honour-based violence before anything else; JRP reports revenge killings following public confessions in one location [source: Baines et al. 2007].
  • Customary process does not replace law, safeguarding or specialist services. Practical meaning: refer for legal advice; apply mandatory reporting and safeguarding duties as your jurisdiction requires [synthesis]. In restorative justice guidance, victim safety is paramount and a restorative process must not reduce criminal sanctions or minimise the crime [source: Restorative Justice Council].
  • Domestic, family and sexual violence need specialist handling. Practical meaning: these are not matters for informal or customary handling without specialist risk assessment and support; guidance requires risk assessment, specialist training in coercive control and survivor control of the process [source: Restorative Justice Council; OVW 2025]. Lang notes that when a woman is killed by a close male relative, no sulha follows; mato oput's elders say mass rape lies outside their precedents [source: Lang 2002; Baines et al. 2005].
  • Collective harm, individual client. Practical meaning: hold the family and clan frame the client lives in, while protecting the individual's confidentiality and choices [synthesis].
  • Attribute, do not adjudicate, spiritual beliefs. Practical meaning: work with cen, spirits and cleansing as the client and tradition understand them, neither endorsing nor dismissing; still assess for treatable conditions [synthesis; beliefs as reported in Baines et al. 2005].
  • Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Practical meaning: respondents told JRP that forgiveness comes before mato oput and is not the same thing; never make forgiveness a therapy goal the client has not chosen [source: Baines et al. 2007].
  • Truth alone may not be enough. Practical meaning: take compensation, burial and acknowledgement seriously as needs; JRP respondents said truth reveals but compensation heals and restores relationships [source: Baines et al. 2007].
  • Gender and power awareness. Practical meaning: women are largely excluded from formal roles (in mato oput they may serve as witnesses in some cases; in sulha they are excluded from formal participation yet influential informally), and exile under sulha falls heavily on women and children; make room for their account [source: Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007; Pely 2013; Anderson 2009].
  • Cultural humility. Practical meaning: let the client teach you their version; ask, do not assume that everyone in a community supports the rite (youth and some Christians may not) [source: Baines et al. 2005; JRP 2017].
  • Avoid re-traumatisation. Practical meaning: pace retelling; survivors report that repeated discussion of harm is draining and re-exposing [source: Baines et al. 2007; Lawler 2025].
  • Role clarity and competence. Practical meaning: a therapist from the same community may be asked to mediate or attend; weigh multiple-relationship risks (APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05) and decline roles outside your training [synthesis].

4. Intervention inventory

The sources describe the customary processes, not therapist procedures. Every intervention below is a therapist-side procedure built from the sources' descriptions of the rites, their limits and survivors' views, and from restorative justice and cultural-formulation guidance; steps are [synthesis] unless a source is named.

4.1 Cultural Formulation Interview with relevant modules

  • Purpose / when: At intake, whenever a client is affected by a sulha, mato oput or related rite. Builds the client's explanatory model before any formulation.
  • Steps: (1) Use the core CFI to elicit the client's own description of the problem, the cultural definition, perceived causes and help-seeking. (2) Add the supplementary modules for Social Network (who matters, who knows, whether they help or hinder, whether the client wants them involved), Psychosocial Stressors (including discrimination and identity-related difficulty), and Spirituality, Religion and Moral Traditions (affiliations, role of tradition in family life, whether it helps coping or contributes to the problem, conflict about belief or practice) [source: APA CFI Supplementary Modules 2013]. (3) For refugees and migrants add the Immigrants and Refugees module [source: APA CFI Supplementary Modules 2013]. (4) Summarise back what you heard and check accuracy.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Tell me in your own words what happened between the families, and what the reconciliation means to you and to the people at home." / "Is there anything about your faith or your family's traditions that helps you with this, or that makes it harder?"
  • Watch for: The client giving the community's official story rather than their own; shame about discussing family matters with an outsider. Working: the client corrects your summary and adds private views.

4.2 Mapping the client's position and the stage of the process

  • Purpose / when: Early; the clinical task differs completely depending on whether the client belongs to the injured family, the responsible family, is a mediator, a returnee, or a relative sent into exile.
  • Steps: (1) Draw a simple genogram or family map with the client, marking both families or clans, who has spoken for whom, and who is absent (exiled, imprisoned, dead, abroad). (2) Ask which stage the process is at: truce or cooling-off, persuasion, fact-finding, compensation, ceremony, completed, pending or collapsed [stages as outlined in Irani 2000; Lang 2002; Baines et al. 2005]. (3) Note any parallel criminal case. (4) Note the client's formal role (often none, especially for women and young people).
  • Example language (illustrative): "Where are things right now, has a truce been agreed, or are people still waiting?" / "Who speaks for your family in this, and do you feel they speak for you?"
  • Watch for: Gaps between the client's role and the weight they carry. Working: a shared map that both of you refer back to.

4.3 Voluntariness and pressure assessment

  • Purpose / when: Before any preparation for participation, and again before the ceremony.
  • Steps: (1) Ask separately: what the client wants, what the family expects, what the community expects. (2) Name, without judgement, the social cost of refusing that scholars describe (refusing a jaha can be shameful; elders may feel obliged to yield) [source: Lang 2002]. (3) Explore whether consent to confess or to accept settlement is free; JRP respondents held that no one should be forced and that forced confessions produce falsehoods [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (4) Identify which choices remain the client's own (attending, speaking, what to say in therapy) even when the family decision is fixed.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Setting aside what your uncles have decided, if it were only up to you, what would you want?" / "Some people go along to protect the family's name. Is any of that true for you?"
  • Watch for: Apparent agreement masking fear; the therapist pushing towards either refusal or acceptance. Working: the client can state their own position and the price of each option.

4.4 Safety and risk assessment

  • Purpose / when: At intake and whenever the process changes stage.
  • Steps: (1) Ask directly about revenge threats, retaliation, and the client's movements. JRP reports that public confessions in one location were followed by revenge killings, and that former fighters fear revenge [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (2) Ask about exile or relocation imposed by mediators (tarhil), which falls mostly on women and children for years [source: Pely 2013]. (3) Screen for domestic, family, sexual and honour-based violence; if present, the matter needs specialist risk assessment and services, not informal settlement (restorative justice guidance treats victim safety as paramount, requires risk assessment, and treats cases with risk of serious injury, sexual assault or death as potentially unsuitable) [source: Restorative Justice Council; OVW 2025]. (4) Assess suicide and self-harm risk by standard practice. (5) Make a written safety plan where risk is present.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Has anyone threatened you or your family since this happened?" / "Is anyone at home putting pressure on you in a way that frightens you?"
  • Watch for: Minimising threats to protect the truce; risk to women in the family that no one names. Working: concrete safety steps agreed and reviewed.

4.5 Legal, safeguarding and confidentiality orientation

  • Purpose / when: First sessions, before detailed disclosure of events.
  • Steps: (1) Explain the limits of confidentiality, including any duty to report risk to others, child safeguarding, and how you would respond to disclosure of a serious crime in your jurisdiction. (2) Note that in at least some states customary settlement has no legal standing and criminal law still applies (in Lang's Israeli setting, killers remain subject to criminal law) [source: Lang 2002]. (3) Recommend independent legal advice before confessions or signed agreements. (4) Clarify that you will not share material with mediators, elders or family without written consent.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Before you tell me details of what happened, I want you to know what I must keep private and what I might have to act on."
  • Watch for: Disclosures in session that trigger duties; clients who assume a settlement ends legal liability. Working: the client makes disclosure choices knowingly.

4.6 Process orientation from the client's own community sources

  • Purpose / when: When the client is unsure what will happen; reduces uncertainty-driven anxiety.
  • Steps: (1) Ask what the client knows and who would know more (a mediator, elder, religious leader). (2) Encourage the client to ask those people, not you, about ceremony details. (3) At most, share the published outline in Section 2a as a frame, making clear that local practice varies [source: Irani 2000 notes forms vary between Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan]. (4) List the client's questions for the mediators.
  • Example language (illustrative): "I'm not the person who knows how it's done in your village. Who could you ask, and what would you want to ask them?"
  • Watch for: The therapist becoming an informal authority on the rite. Working: the client returns with answers from the people who hold the process.

4.7 Preparing a member of the injured family

  • Purpose / when: When the client is a bereaved or injured relative who will take part in truce visits, the ceremony or hospitality.
  • Steps: (1) Identify moments likely to be hardest (receiving the jaha, shaking hands with the responsible family, receiving compensation in public, hosting or attending the meal) [elements as outlined in Irani 2000; Lang 2002]. (2) For each, rehearse what the client might feel and do, including the option to step back if the family allows. (3) Distinguish public role from private feeling: the ceremony may require magnanimity before the community while grief and anger continue [source on magnanimity as honour: Lang 2002]. (4) Plan support for after each event.
  • Example language (illustrative): "When you picture the handshake, what happens in your body?" / "You can carry out your part for the family and still be angry or grieving afterwards. Both can be true."
  • Watch for: Dissociation during rehearsal; grief being suppressed to honour the settlement. Working: the client can approach the moments in imagination with tolerable distress.

4.8 Preparing a responsible person or a member of the responsible family

  • Purpose / when: When the client has caused harm, or belongs to the family or clan that has (clan responsibility is collective in both traditions) [source: Irani 2000; Baines et al. 2005].
  • Steps: (1) Clarify legal advice first (4.5). (2) Explore acknowledgement: what the client accepts responsibility for, what they do not, and what they fear saying; JRP reports that fear keeps returnees from confessing [source: Baines et al. 2005]. (3) Work with shame without collapsing into self-condemnation or defensiveness (4.9). (4) For relatives who did not commit the harm, address the burden of collective responsibility, including exile and loss of home [source: Pely 2013]. (5) Plan for the humbling acts the role may involve and for safety on the day.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What part of this do you feel is yours to answer for?" / "You didn't do this, and yet your life has changed because of it. What has that been like?"
  • Watch for: Pressure to confess beyond what is true; risk to the client after acknowledgement. Working: the client can speak about the harm without minimising or self-destruction.

4.9 Working with honour, shame and humiliation

  • Purpose / when: When the client's distress is organised around family honour, public face, humiliation or the duty of revenge.
  • Steps: (1) Ask what honour means in the client's family and how the harm affected it; Lang describes sulha as repairing sharaf through the responsible side's remorse, the mediators humbling themselves before the injured family, and the injured family's magnanimity [source: Lang 2002]. (2) Separate the communal meaning from the client's private experience of shame or humiliation. (3) Use compassion-focused or cognitive work on shame where appropriate, within the client's values. (4) Explore revenge thoughts openly and without alarm, alongside risk assessment.
  • Example language (illustrative): "In your family, what does it mean when someone's honour is hurt like this?" / "Some people describe carrying blood as very heavy. What is it like to carry this?" (the image of blood as heavy is a Galilee informant's, reported by Lang 2002)
  • Watch for: Revenge planning; the therapist pathologising honour itself. Working: the client can hold the family's meaning and their own feelings side by side.

4.10 Separating forgiveness, reconciliation and settlement

  • Purpose / when: When the client feels obliged to forgive, or confuses public settlement with inner change.
  • Steps: (1) Map the three with the client: inner forgiveness (optional, personal), relational reconciliation (between families), and settlement (an agreed ending of the feud). (2) Note that JRP respondents held forgiveness to come before mato oput and to differ from it [source: Baines et al. 2007], and Lang observes that formal participation binds families into obligations regardless of sincerity [source: Lang 2002]. (3) Let the client decide which, if any, they want.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The families can agree to end this without you having to feel forgiveness. Which of these, if any, is something you want for yourself?"
  • Watch for: Guilt about not forgiving; the therapist holding a forgiveness agenda. Working: reduced self-blame and clearer personal goals.

4.11 Holding spiritual frames alongside clinical assessment

  • Purpose / when: When the client describes haunting, cen, spirits of the unburied, impurity or the need for cleansing.
  • Steps: (1) Ask what the client and family believe is happening and what would put it right; Acholi elders describe cen as an angry spirit causing nightmares, illness or mental illness until a wrong is ritually addressed, and as able to follow a lineage [source: Baines et al. 2005]. (2) Assess in parallel for PTSD, depression, psychosis, complicated grief and substance use, without presenting the clinical frame as replacing the spiritual one. (3) Ask whether the client wants a cultural or religious leader's help; JRP recommends that ceremonies follow truth-telling so that people still haunted can seek help from cultural leaders [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (4) Offer evidence-based treatment for any diagnosed condition as an addition, not an alternative, if the client wishes. (5) Where a religious or spiritual difficulty is central, the ICD-10-CM Z65.8 code, which includes religious or spiritual problem, may be recorded [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8 (Unbound Medicine)].
  • Example language (illustrative): "In your family's understanding, what is causing these dreams, and what would help?" / "Alongside whatever the elders can do, there are treatments for nightmares after trauma. Would you like to hear about them?"
  • Watch for: Dismissing or endorsing belief; missing a treatable disorder; fear of a curse blocking disclosure. Working: the client uses both cultural and clinical help without feeling disloyal.

4.12 Supporting the long wait and pending cases

  • Purpose / when: During truce, exile, persuasion or negotiation, which Lang reports can last from months to years, with some cases pending for decades [source: Lang 2002].
  • Steps: (1) Name uncertainty as a stressor in itself. (2) Separate what the client controls from what the mediators and elders control. (3) Build routines, social contact and activity within the limits of safety. (4) Track mood, sleep, anger and revenge thoughts across the wait. (5) Plan for flashpoints (anniversaries, chance encounters, court dates).
  • Example language (illustrative): "It has been a long time with no ending. What helps you get through the weeks when nothing moves?"
  • Watch for: Hopelessness, rising anger, isolation in exile. Working: functioning holds steady while the process continues.

4.13 Compensation, cost and economic strain

  • Purpose / when: When compensation is demanded, offered, unaffordable or contested.
  • Steps: (1) Explore what compensation means to the client: substitute for a life, honour, livelihood, acknowledgement. JRP respondents said that without payment their hearts would not heal, and that compensation heals and restores relationships [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (2) Acknowledge poverty as a barrier; JRP reports that compensation is often unaffordable and recommends public funding of ceremonies [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (3) Note that sulha compensation is set by mediators and negotiated privately, and that mediators have their own interests [source: Lang 2002]; refer the client for independent advice where money or property is at stake. (4) Address guilt or resentment about money.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Some people feel money can never stand for a life, and others feel it's the only real sign of respect. Where are you?"
  • Watch for: Debt, family conflict over payment, the client feeling bought. Working: the client can articulate what would and would not count as repair.

4.14 Gender-sensitive work and women's voices

  • Purpose / when: With women clients and with any client where women's experience is invisible in the process.
  • Steps: (1) Ask women what they know, want and were told; JRP recorded a woman saying she knew nothing about mato oput [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (2) Note formal exclusion and informal influence: in sulha women are excluded from formal participation yet shape process and outcome informally [source: Pely 2013]; in mato oput senior women could serve only as witnesses [source: Baines et al. 2005]; mato oput has been criticised as gender-insensitive though supported by Acholi men and women [source: Anderson 2009]. (3) Assess the impact of exile on women and children [source: Pely 2013]. (4) Recognise that sexual and gender-based violence, including forced marriage and rape in conflict, are not addressed by these rites as described [source: Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007]; refer to specialist services. (5) Offer a space for a woman's own account even when the family's settlement is final.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The men have made the agreement. What has this been like for you and the other women in the family?"
  • Watch for: Silencing by relatives present in session; GBV disclosures. Working: the client states needs that the process did not address.

4.15 Coordinating with mediators, elders and religious leaders

  • Purpose / when: Only if the client asks for it, typically to align support, share safety concerns or arrange cultural help.
  • Steps: (1) Obtain written consent specifying what may be shared and with whom. (2) Clarify roles in advance: the mediators and elders hold the process; the therapist supports the client's wellbeing. (3) Share the minimum needed (for example, a safety need, or that the client needs time). (4) Never advocate for one family's terms. (5) Record the contact and review it with the client.
  • Example language (illustrative, to an elder or mediator): "I support [client] with the strain this has caused. They've asked me to let you know they need more time before the meeting. I'm not involved in the reconciliation itself."
  • Watch for: Being drawn into mediation or seen as partisan; confidentiality leaks within small communities; multiple relationships if you share the community (APA Ethics Code Standard 3.05). Working: support and process run in parallel without role confusion.

4.16 Planning around the ceremony day

  • Purpose / when: In the weeks before a public ceremony.
  • Steps: (1) Identify a trusted support person present on the day. (2) Agree grounding strategies the client can use unobtrusively in a public setting. (3) Plan for unexpected moments (a speech, a gesture, seeing the other party). (4) Agree when and how to contact you afterwards, and crisis contacts. (5) The therapist does not attend unless clearly invited, culturally appropriate and role-safe [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative): "If it becomes too much while everyone is watching, what could you do that no one else would notice?"
  • Watch for: Anticipatory panic, sleeplessness, alcohol use. Working: a concrete, rehearsed plan the client feels able to use.

4.17 Post-ceremony debrief and integration

  • Purpose / when: Soon after the ceremony and over following months.
  • Steps: (1) Invite the client's account of what happened and what it meant, without pressing for detail. (2) Ask what was repaired and what was not (honour, relationship, safety, grief, truth). (3) Normalise mixed reactions: relief alongside grief that returns. (4) Reassess trauma and grief symptoms; offer trauma-focused or grief treatment where indicated. (5) Support re-engagement with community life; in restorative justice settings survivors valued continuity of support into other services after a conference [source: Lawler 2025].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Now that it's done, what feels finished, and what still feels open?"
  • Watch for: Expectation that grief should now end; delayed distress. Working: the client integrates the event into their story and resumes valued activities.

4.18 When the rite is refused, impossible or fails

  • Purpose / when: When a family refuses, a sulha stays pending, mato oput cannot be held, or the dead are missing.
  • Steps: (1) Identify why: refusal, cost, collapse, or impossibility; elders say "the rebels cannot mato oput" where victims and killers do not know each other, and many returnees do not know whom they killed [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (2) Work with grief and the missing dead; JRP survivors want truth, bodies returned and burial, and Acholi tradition has rites to call home the spirits of the unburied [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (3) Help the client find what forms of acknowledgement remain possible (religious ritual, memorial, documentation; JRP recommends memory centres where names can be recorded and rituals performed) [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (4) Address shame or fear about an unfinished obligation. Cross-refer 112 mourning rites.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The ceremony your family hoped for can't happen. What would help you honour the person you lost, even so?"
  • Watch for: Prolonged grief, fear of spiritual consequences, family blame. Working: the client has some form of acknowledgement and an ongoing bond they can live with.

4.19 Returnees and people who were both harmed and harming

  • Purpose / when: With former abductees or combatants, and with communities receiving them.
  • Steps: (1) Recognise that abducted youth were often forced to commit atrocities, complicating the victim and perpetrator distinction [source: Baines et al. 2007]. (2) Assess trauma from both being harmed and harming (including moral injury). (3) Address stigma, resentment and economic hardship on return [source: Baines et al. 2005]. (4) Explore the meaning of welcome or cleansing rites (such as nyono tong gweno) for the client, as they understand them [source: Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007]. (5) Plan for safety where revenge is feared.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You were taken and made to do things you would never have chosen. How do you hold both of those?"
  • Watch for: Self-condemnation, suicidal ideation, community rejection. Working: reduced shame, safer reintegration, connection with supportive kin.

4.20 Diaspora, mixed families and those who decline

  • Purpose / when: With clients abroad, in interfaith or mixed families, young people or Christians uneasy with the rite, or anyone who does not want to take part.
  • Steps: (1) Explore pressure from family at home and what participation at a distance would mean. (2) Note that young people may see elders as representing the past [source: Baines et al. 2005] and that some Christians question the ritual; elders told JRP that individuals may choose what suits their faith [source: JRP 2017]. (3) Support the client to state their position to family, using rehearsal or a letter. (4) Address grief or guilt about distance or refusal.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Your family sees this as the only right way to end things, and you're not sure it is yours. Let's work out what you want to say to them."
  • Watch for: Family cut-off; the therapist taking sides against tradition. Working: the client can hold their position with less guilt.

4.21 Supporting a client who serves as a mediator or elder

  • Purpose / when: When the client is a jaha member, elder or community leader under strain.
  • Steps: (1) Explore the burden of responsibility, repeated exposure to grief and anger, and community expectation. (2) Note that mediation can carry political and personal stakes [source: Lang 2002]. (3) Attend to vicarious trauma and burnout. (4) Keep the focus on the client's wellbeing, not on advising their mediation.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You carry other families' pain as well as your own. What does that cost you?"
  • Watch for: Requests for you to coach the mediation; confidentiality of the families involved. Working: the client sets limits and recovers between cases.

5. Handling problems

The customary sources do not address therapy problems directly; responses below are [synthesis] except where a source is named.

  • Client feels coerced into settlement or confession. Return to 4.3; separate the client's wish from family decision; identify remaining choices; check safety. Do not argue the client out of the rite or into it. Coercion undermines what the process itself values (JRP respondents rejected forced participation) [source: Baines et al. 2007].
  • Revenge threats or revenge intent. Treat as a risk issue: assess, safety-plan, and act on duties to protect where the law requires. Explore revenge feelings openly in session, which reduces secrecy, while being clear about limits of confidentiality.
  • Domestic, family, sexual or honour-based violence surfaces. Stop treating the matter as one for customary or informal resolution in therapy; apply safeguarding, refer to specialist DV, sexual violence or honour-based abuse services, and follow restorative justice guidance that victim safety is paramount and the survivor must be in control [source: Restorative Justice Council; OVW 2025]. Never encourage a client to use a family settlement in place of protection.
  • Overwhelm or re-traumatisation from retelling. Pace narrative work; use grounding; limit detail to what serves the client; survivors describe each retelling as re-experiencing trauma [source: Lawler 2025]. Consider trauma-focused treatment once the situation is safer and the client chooses it.
  • Stuck in the wait. Reframe goals from "ending it" to living well while it is open (4.12); review with the client whether the process is still wanted.
  • Client wants the therapist to advise on the rite or to mediate. Decline warmly, explain role limits, and redirect to elders, mediators or religious leaders (4.6, 4.15). If you share the community, discuss multiple-relationship risks and consider referral.
  • Rupture over cultural misunderstanding. Acknowledge directly, ask the client to teach you, and repair; use the CFI Patient-Clinician Relationship module to explore differences [module named in APA CFI Supplementary Modules 2013].
  • Therapist's own reactions. Discomfort with honour frames, gendered exclusion, compensation for a death, or spiritual explanations can leak into the work; take it to supervision or cultural consultation rather than to the client.
  • Ceremony goes badly or the agreement breaks. Debrief (4.17), reassess safety and grief, and avoid framing it as the client's failure.
  • Non-attendance and dropout. Long processes and community pressure can lead to irregular contact; agree in advance how the client can return, and offer flexible contact while safety permits.
  • Suicidal ideation. Assess by standard practice and safety-plan; crisis resources include 988 (US) and Samaritans 116 123 (UK and Ireland), plus local emergency services and national lines in the client's country.
  • Process expectations exceed what the rite can deliver. Elders themselves say mato oput in its current form may not fit mass crimes, and JRP calls for national processes for high-level perpetrators [source: Baines et al. 2005; Baines et al. 2007]; help the client hold partial repair and seek other forms of acknowledgement.
  • Referring to a formal restorative justice service instead or alongside. Where a statutory or community restorative justice scheme exists, the UNODC Handbook (2nd ed., 2020) identifies preparation of participants, competent facilitation and safe, meaningful engagement of victims among success factors [source: EFRJ brief on UNODC 2020]; refer only to schemes with trained facilitators, and see 066 for family group conferencing.

Sources

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