Addressing Dilemmas of the Global and the Local in Transitional Justice

Abstract

The importance of (local ownership, values, practices, etc.) in matters of post-conflict peacebuilding and transitional justice has become an increasingly common trope in academic and policy discourse. Yet despite its centrality, concepts like local ownership' remain vague and poorly understood, often being associated more with aspirational rhetoric than concrete policy reality. Examined more deeply, the seeming consensus about the importance of the in transitional justice masks a profound ambivalence arising out of a clash of normative commitments: between a commitment to liberal internationalism and international human rights on the one hand, and to principles of sovereignty, autonomy, and democracy on the other. Striking a better balance between these commitments represents one of the key policy challenges of 21st century transitional justice. To this end, this article seeks to analyze and deconstruct the concept of the in the transitional justice context, exploring its promises and pitfalls. In particular, I argue that understanding global-local dilemmas requires one to unpack the concept of ownership, distinguishing concerns about actual control (agency, decision making, funding), process (bottom-up, participatory, homegrown), and substance (values, practices, priorities), even if those concerns are in practice highly related. Deconstruction of the concept of the local, in turn, tends to destabilize, breaking down simple binary notions of global and local. Going forward, achieving a better global-local balance along the multiple dimensions of ownership may help to generate new and innovative approaches that take us beyond the increasingly rote transitional justice toolbox.