A Voices-Centered Approach to Transitional Justice: Youth-led Activism and Artistic Initiatives Open Spaces for Broad Community Engagement

Feminist interventions have challenged the field of transitional developed approaches, and formulated critiques that have revisited many foundational assumptions regarding the human rights canon and the role of legal processes, truth commissions, and other institutions in advancing justice struggles. In some areas feminist interventions in practice and scholarship had gained wider recognition and influenced developments in the field. However, in many other areas, feminist interventions have remained on the margins, with little discussion occurring even among feminists. It was in this context that the ICTJ (1) gender program sought to convene a seminar that would take stock of feminist approaches in the field of transitional justice thus far while also providing a forum for considering how feminist critical inquiry may continue to transform the intellectual boundaries and settled practices of the field. It was also a seminar for debating differences among feminists regarding priorities and strategies. The discussion was structured around the four commissioned pre-circulated papers on ideas of victimization, truth, justice, and political violence that are published in this volume. Each of the paper presentations and subsequent discussions addressed the conceptual assumptions behind transitional justice approaches in countries as diverse as India, Australia, South Africa, and Northern Ireland, foregrounding critical debates about what is at stake in transitional justice for feminists, and considering what transitional justice actually means. Creating and fostering a space for constructive debate and engendering a critically reflective practice presented provocative challenges in both the planning process and the unfolding of the seminar itself. We questioned whether to engage with the canon by structuring discussion against the received precepts of 'transitional justice', or to use a different starting point that would not re-inscribe the field's constitutive assumptions in contesting them. For instance, practitioners and scholars may often refer to the pillars of transitional justice: prosecutions, truth commissions (TRCs), reparations, institutional reform, and reconciliation initiatives. These are the established institutional avenues that structure and shape the conceptual imagination of the field, and ground its normative vision through institutions and practices. In organizing this seminar, however, we chose not to structure the discussion around these pillars, in hopes of launching a discussion that would allow us to revisit the boundaries of transitional justice. Similar questions arose in shaping the participant mix. Considering that there are those who are true believers in the promise of international law, and others who are skeptics or agnostics who see transitional justice as merely a strategy towards certain goals, we sought to cultivate a productive conversation between those who have been immersed in transitional justice institutions and others who have stood outside it as critics. Thus, the seminar gathered together people who were located differently across the field. Some were pivotal figures in different parts of the globe in longstanding efforts to push the boundaries of transitional justice through feminist interventions, while others had done little or no work in transitional justice but had done interesting critical work in the broader field of human rights and humanitarian law. Finally, the participant mix was an effort to bring together different kinds of activists, some of whom were primarily scholars and others who were primarily practitioners. This cross-fertilization was both challenging and productive because often academics and practitioners are engaged in parallel, non-intersecting conversations, and this workshop intended to provide them with an opportunity to interact. There were some participants who straddle the worlds of academia and practice, but many in the room had previously been only in separate worlds, shaped by different imperatives and even different visions of what was at stake in transitional justice. …

This chapter explores the relationships between transitional justice, transformative justice, democracy and development. Concentrating on the ways in which these concepts and their practice both overlap and diverge, the chapter considers the extent to which transitional justice and development could become mutually constitutive as well as challenges to this. The chapter argues that established, narrow approaches to transitional justice are less likely to contribute towards development than broader transformative justice approaches. Moreover, it is argued that narrow approaches to development can work against – or at least fail to contribute towards – some of the (supposed) ends of transitional justice. The chapter argues that transformative justice and broader understandings of development are more synergistic. However, it is nevertheless the case that transitional (and transformative) justice cannot fully absorb or be absorbed into development. Different (though not outright contradictory) foci ought to be maintained. The chapter concludes by positing that it is necessary for advocates of transitional justice and development (and transformative justice) to maintain a concern for democracy (what it is, in which processes it might be implemented and how it might be promoted) in order to realise the potential, and avoid the pitfalls, of considering transitional justice and development together.

This piece explores and critiques the project of transitional justice. It has been more than a quarter of a century since transitional justice burst onto the global stage. Over the years it has come to be billed as a panacea for addressing deeply embedded social and political dysfunction after periods of mass repression and violence. Many theorists and policy makers have argued that it is a key bridge to sustainable peace, democracy and human rights. But the historical record is not clear about a direct causal relationship between transitional justice mechanisms and specific outcomes in post-conflict societies. In some cases, truth commissions, criminal prosecutions and other transitional justice interventions appear to have given society a chance at a new and hopeful beginning. In others, conflicts have either re-emerged or been exacerbated. Which begs the question, is transitional justice the appropriate vehicle for achieving these goals? If it does not always lead to positive outcomes, why not? Are there conceptual problems and theoretical deficiencies in how we make sense of justice and transitions that account for the failures? Or is it the translation of transitional justice norms into practice that is wanting? The big question is this: Does transitional justice have a future, given its mixed record? This piece focuses on the meaning of the concept, how its application has evolved and whether it is sustainable as theory and praxis. How defined is the concept of transitional justice? What exactly does it entail and what does it seek to achieve? Are political democracy, the rule of law and human rights – the pivots of liberalism – the desired end results implicit in transitional justice approaches? If so, why should liberalism be the germ of the new post-conflict society? If transitional justice promotes liberalism, who gains and who loses if it succeeds? How would liberalism address deeply rooted cultural, colonial and ethnic rivalries and inequities? Would structures of deep inequity be vanquished by these norms? Or does this conception of transitional justice exacerbate conflicts as it seeks to transform societies? Who pays for transformation? What about market forces and norms – do they fuel or contain conflict? If existing transitional justice concepts are inadequate to recover, or reclaim, societies sickened by violence and repression, are there alternatives? If so, how do those alternatives compare with present conceptualizations of transitional justice? Should the term ‘transitional justice’ itself be abandoned?

In “Stepping Out of the Shadow of Transitional Justice: A Theoretical Framework for Institutional Justice,” Kathleen Daly recently developed a new theoretical framework of institutional justice and in doing so resisted attempts, including my own in Transitional Justice and the Historical Abuses of Church and State, to address the context of institutional abuses through a transitional justice framework. This response article suggests that (i) the types of large-scale wrong at issue in institutional abuse and transitional justice paradigm contexts can and should be legally and politically understood as human rights violations; (ii) the socio-political contexts in transitional justice and institutional justice cases are best understood as part of a continuum of large-scale violence, familiar to transitional justice; (iii) political transition remains relevant to institutional justice cases, particularly in settler colonial contexts; and (iv) national and sub-national variation in victim-survivors struggles for justice needs rights and interests are to be expected and may profitably learn from one another’s successes, struggles and strategies. As a result, this response concludes that while institutional justice cases warrant a clear history of their own legal, policy, and intellectual evolution, which Daly ably provides, the broader framework of transitional justice offers value in connecting seemingly disparate sites, times, and victim-survivors of large-scale injustices.

Geopolitical changes combined with the increasing urgency of ambitious climate action have re-opened debates about justice and international climate policy. Mechanisms and insights from transitional justice have been used in over thirty countries across a range of conflicts at the interface of historical responsibility and imperatives for collective futures. However, lessons from transitional justice theory and practice have not been systematically explored in the climate context. The comparison gives rise to new ideas and strategies that help address climate change dilemmas. This book examines the potential of transitional justice insights to inform global climate governance. It lays out core structural similarities between current global climate governance tensions and transitional justice contexts. It explores how transitional justice approaches and mechanisms could be productively applied in the climate change context. These include responsibility mechanisms such as amnesties, legal accountability measures, and truth commissions, as well as reparations and institutional reform. The book then steps beyond reformist transitional justice practice to consider more transformative approaches, and uses this to explore a wider set of possibilities for the climate context. Each chapter presents one or more concrete proposals arrived at by using ideas from transitional justice and applying them to the justice tensions central to the global climate context. By combining these two fields the book provides a new framework through which to understand the challenges of addressing harms and strengthening collective climate action. This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of climate change and transitional justice.

This study investigated the role of mediation in grassroots transitional justice processes. The major aim of the study was to understand the role of mediation in transitional justice processes, ascertaining its effectiveness as a grassroots transitional justice mechanism and how its demand for use in transitional justice can be increased. The study was carried out using action research methodologies, with a mediation project carried out in the Makoni District of Manicaland in Zimbabwe. The mediation project involved community members addressing transitional-justice-related conflicts using mediation as a tool for conflict resolution. The mediators were provided with mediation skills through a training programme and their work was evaluated thrice to ascertain the role and impact of the mediation interventions on transitional-justicerelated conflicts. The project was termed Mediation for Everyday Transitional Justice because it was implemented in a natural community’s daily environment, by local people and for the local communities. The continuing failure of transitional justice mechanisms in Zimbabwe amid continued human rights violations justifies the undeniable value of this study. Zimbabwe’s past transitional justice efforts (since 1980, when the country became an independent republic) failed to build sustainable peace hence the country’s continued relapse into political and socio-economic turmoil. However, with appropriate transitional justice interventions that are built on grassroots-informed processes, sustainable peace is conceivable in Zimbabwe. Mediation, as an alternative dispute resolution process that is both persuasive and non-retributive, offers an interesting opportunity to the practice of transitional justice. The research concluded that the role of mediation in transitional justice is to facilitate truth telling, reparations, healing, and reconciliation among disputants without the need to use national-level transitional justice infrastructures. This means that, at the grassroots level, transitional justice processes can take place without waiting for the statist transitional justice approaches. However, in cases where the past human rights violations being addressed are tied to structural violence, driven from outside the community, local mediation processes may not be possible without the consent, cooperation, and willingness of those who sustain such conflicts. In addition, mediation cannot play any significant role in enabling prosecutorial justice, memorialisation, and institutional reforms at the grassroots level. Prosecutorial justice cannot be achieved because perpetrators can withdraw quickly when possibilities exist to be held criminally accountable for past human rights abuses. Institutional reforms also require changing governance policies and practices which are issues beyond the control of specific local communities. The study also observed that mediation is an effective tool for grassroots transitional justice issues because it is efficient, it saves time and financial resources, and it can be undertaken by local actors. To increase its demand and use in transitional justice processes at the grassroots level, these is a need to increase communities’ awareness of the importance of mediation in transitional justice, provide mediation-skills capacity-development interventions to potential mediators, and enhance the agency of various mediation actors at the grassroots levels.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the place of transitional justice in peacebuilding by exploring how domestic and international actors frame this relationship and how this, in turn, moulds dynamics of contestation around transitional justice. In the transitional justice literature, contestation is usually framed around an international–domestic dichotomy: transitional justice agendas promoted by external actors confront strategies of instrumental adaptation of transitional justice by domestic elites and the adoption of alternative transitional justice approaches by local actors. Based on an analysis of transitional justice policy-making in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this paper proposes that a more multifaceted reading of contestation to transitional justice is needed. In the DRC, both external and domestic actors variously acted as transitional justice promoters and resisters, and their positioning on transitional justice was strongly conditioned by their broader understandings of the nature of the conflict and transitional justice’s role in peacebuilding. It is therefore suggested that contestation of transitional justice does not necessarily reflect a rejection of international approaches to justice, but instead more broadly expresses a lack of agreement on what transitional justice is and what its goals are. The article thus contributes to a broader interrogation of how discourses about the meaning of transitional justice are constructed in practice.

The growing interest in ‘During Conflict Justice’ (DCJ) in areas experiencing ongoing, sustained violent ‘conflict’ has further demonstrated the confluence between transitional justice and liberal peacebuilding approaches. Nowhere so is this more evident than in the case of Palestine-Israel where an ongoing process of Israeli settler-colonialism in historic Palestine continues, with the further spotlighting of ‘justice’ issues that are longstanding and unresolved. This article critiques the application of TJ/DCJ in Palestine-Israel and calls for a radicalisation of its application so as to ensure a platforming of conversation around decolonisation. It does so by critiquing the impact of discourse, specifically the framing of the ‘conflict’ and focuses on the nefarious role of a liberal peace building agenda in Palestine-Israel, a process that has embedded a deeply unjust and inequitable status quo. An insight into several ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies of TJ/DCJ in Palestine-Israel is provided, with the conclusion reached that; any TJ/DCJ praxis that does not platform meaningful conversation around decolonisation in the region will ultimately amount to the individualisation of ‘justice’ whilst failing to address root causes.

As transitional justice has spread across the world as an expected approach for states dealing with grave human rights violations, seemingly similar global measures have been established in disparate ways. In Colombia, opposing administrations set up diverging types of transitional justice at different points in time: In 2005, President Uribe established a transitional justice approach for paramilitaries to evade intervention by the International Criminal Court and bury the truth. A decade later, President Santos negotiated a transitional justice approach with the FARC that focused on truth-telling and deviated from prison sentences to secure a peace agreement. Moving between global norms and national politics, this study reveals how transitional justice is adjusted, contested, and transformed, as different groups struggle to shape the state’s approach. This generates a more dynamic understanding of the historical, social, and political processes involved in the ways that governments decouple transitional justice in distinct national contexts.

Truth-seeking mechanisms, international criminal law developments, and other forms of transitional justice have become ubiquitous in societies emerging from long years of conflict, instability and oppression and moving into a post-conflict, more peaceful era. In practice, both top-down and bottom-up approaches to transitional justice are being formally and informally developed in places such as South Africa, Liberia, Peru, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Northern Ireland. Many studies, conferences and debates have taken place addressing these developments and providing elaboration of theories relating to transition justice generally. However, rarely have these processes been examined and critiqued through a feminist lens. The position of women, particularly their specific victimisation, typically has not been taken into account in any systematic manner. Seldom do commentators specifically consider whether the recently developed mechanisms for promoting peace and reconciliation will actually help the position of women in a society moving out of repression or conflict. This is unfortunate, since women’s issues are often overlooked and post-conflict societies, because they must rebuild, are ideally poised to introduce standards that would enable and ensure the active participation of the entire population, including women, in rebuilding a more stable, fair and democratic polity. This book offers some insights into women’s perspectives and feminist views on the topic of transitional justice or ‘justice in transition’. Bringing feminism into the conversation allows us to expand the possibilities for a transformative justice approach after a period of conflict or insecurity, not by replacing it with feminist theory, but by broadening the scope and vision of the potential responses. About this book ‘This book is essential for those whose main lines of research are transitional justice, gender, feminism and conflict resolution because it collects together different -perspectives on feminism and the transition to post-conflict times. We have the opportunity to deepen the connection between transitional justice and feminism, but also to reflect on the challenges that lie ahead. In this respect, some of the chapters offer interesting methodologies through which previous findings may be seen in a new light. Everything makes more sense when theory and practice are linked, something that this book does extremely well. The cases of Chile, Kyrgyzstan, Bosnia, Cuba, South Africa, the United States, and others enrich the analysis and help to re-define new strategies to ensure that the gender perspective is kept firmly in the forefront of transitional justice.’ Carolina Jimenez Sanchez in Revue Québécoise de droit international (2013) 291 ‘[Feminist Perspectives on Transitional Justice] opens up fruitful avenues for further research.’ Rosemary Nagy in Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (2014) 446 ‘[W]ith this collection of essays Fineman and Zinsstag have succeeded in exposing transitional justice methodologies to the scrutiny of feminism. This book is essential reading for those involved in developing or implementing transitional justice mechanisms, as it raises the critical discussions that must not be ignored if transitional justice is to positively impact the lives of women in transitioning societies.’ Grace A. Harbour in Journal of International Criminal Justice (2015) Introduction

ABSTRACT∞ Transitional justice and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) converge and diverge in ways that make an exchange between them worthwhile. Despite their continuous academic development, they increasingly confront themselves with existential questions that retain their insular echo chambers. While they center the importance of addressing historical legacies of injustice to build more just futures, their approaches differ. They straddle the worlds of policy prescription (transitional justice) and scholarly praxis (TWAIL) in ways that confine them to their margins. Both fields’ circular introspection is fed through unrepresentative knowledge production and the absence of theories of justice and resistance that appeal to diverse political communities. This article argues that transitional justice should adopt TWAILian indeterminacy and that TWAIL could benefit from transitional justice’s more policy-oriented goals. Ultimately, it argues that rigorous scholarly exchanges between both fields present questions that begin to make cracks in their respective echo chambers.

Colombia and Bosnia, Victims and Peace: And Justice for All?

ABSTRACT∞ This article addresses the question of how countries respond to racial injustices through transitional justice. It draws on the case of Rwanda and explores the experiences of the marginalized indigenous Twa minorities with transitional justice implemented after the 1994 genocide through the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission and Gacaca courts. The lessons from Rwanda highlight the limitations of transitional justice in providing redress for racial injustices of marginalized minorities when it is practised within an authoritarian political context. The article discusses how the transitional justice approach in Rwanda contributed to the construction of a flawed record of the past and marginalized the racial realities of Rwandans by imposing an official historical narrative. It was also used as a tool of the government to negate racial injustices against the most marginalized communities of Twa people but also to preserve racial injustices and human rights violations against them by denying their ethnic identity and indigenous way of life.

Reviewed by: Intermittences: Memory, Justice, & the Poetics of the Visible in Uruguay by Ana Forcinito Inela Selimović (bio) Ana Forcinito, Intermittences: Memory, Justice, & the Poetics of the Visible in Uruguay (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) ISBN: 13: 978–0–8229–6566–4, 257 pages. As one of the leading scholars in her field, Ana Forcinito has made another significant cross-disciplinary contribution with Intermittences: Memory, Justice, & the Poetics of the Visible in Uruguay. The book's cross-disciplinary spirit remains intact and multidimensional throughout, helping us to understand the complexities of the recent Uruguayan dictatorship, both from within and beyond Latin American memory studies. Forcinito's book begins with a layered question that involves, above all, "the meaning of what is remembered—both individually and collectively—and the disputes over those meanings" after state terrorism and during Uruguay's transitional justice period.1 Focusing on cultural production in eight chapters, the author coins the term "intermittences of memory" in order to dissect the processes during which official mnemonic outcomes and forms of remembrance become questioned, countered, and interrupted. According to Forcinito, "intermittences of memory are precisely those attempts to make visible (and audible) the battles over oblivion and silence, and thus to construct an alternative narrative about the past and to expose the blind spots of the model of peace and reconciliation."2 As an epistemic core of her book, the notion of "intermittences of memory" spotlights the role of mnemonic subjects and the ways in which they engage with remembering, forgetting, and "framing" their past in the Uruguayan post-dictatorial context.3 The book's chapters insightfully engage certain theoretical specificities from multiple discursive vantage points, including those related to human rights, law, cultural studies, memory studies, history, and philosophy. Forcinito sets the book's theoretical tone in its introduction, as she elegantly intersects several key concepts that have been instrumental for generating the notion of "intermittences of memory." We trace the author's interactions with Jacques Rancière's "the ethical turn," Pierre Nora's "sites [End Page 986] of memory," Andreas Huyssen's "places of memory," and Maurice Halbwachs's "social frameworks of memory," but also with other cultural and theoretical texts by Walter Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeaur, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Judith Butler, Debra Bergoffen, and Gilles Deleuze. The Introduction primarily contextualizes the subsequent analyses within broader frameworks of human rights, memory, and transitional justice. The ensuing chapters build on and further expand the initial theoretical discussions, displaying rigorous research and rich analyses of cultural production that range from testimonio, installations, videos, photography, film, essays, and literary texts to court rulings and other evidencebased documents. While calling into play a mélange of genres, Forcinito traces the ways in which "intermittent images" ultimately "are residues or spillovers from more visible and established memories."4 Such images function as politically available catalysts for usurping the mnemonic norm in symbolic and concrete ways. Chapter 1, "Transitional Justice and the Visual Politics of Memory," connects human rights violations with cultural production "in order to rethink what becomes visible and invisible in the official cultural politics of memory."5 The chapter juxtaposes tensions between memory and transitional justice through cultural expressions that are based on evidence but also on "poetic gestures."6 The author's discussion of mnemonic inscriptions—and re-inscriptions—of the recent past through architecture is particularly insightful. In examining the transformation of the Punta Carretas penitentiary into a shopping center, for instance, Forcinito underscores the ways in which such reconstructions entail remembrance-oriented contradictions, just as they perpetuate dictatorship-driven injustice. Chapter 2, "Disappearance: Evidence and Poetics," builds on the sociopolitical and cultural context Forcinito unveils in the first two chapters and further focuses on the making of individual and social memory in order to revisit the phenomenon of "disappearances" through documentaries, novels, photography, installations, and testimonies.7 Forcinito links certain evidence-based claims to artistic endeavors in order to tackle the inevitable clashes between remembering and forgetting of Uruguay's tumultuous past. Although differently tackled, the theme of prison survivors' voices and their reinstituted subjectivities interconnects the next two chapters. Chapter 3, "Visible Voices: Testimony and Justice," centers on "the testimonial subject as a...

Transitional Justice Approaches in Tunisia after the Revolution: The de jure and the de facto