Aiming for transitional justice? Diaspora mobilisation for youth and education in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This chapter focuses on the planned transitional justice process and its institutions in action. Thus it mainly concentrates on the Truth and Dignity Commission, how it worked and was perceived, as well as the challenges it faced. It shows that the Truth and Dignity Commission had partisan appeal from the very beginning and that its president Sihem Ben Sedrine was a polarising figure. The commission was perceived as a project that would mainly serve Ennahda and its followers. With the elections of 2014 and the changes in government that followed, the political will for seeking accountability declined further and political support for the transitional justice process dwindled. The chapter shows that the difficulties the truth commission experienced in performing its tasks and fulfilling its goals and promises were due to a combination of factors: an overburdening mandate and internal quarrels, as well as external attempts to hamper its work. But this stage also reveals that the institutionalised process developed its own dynamic that allowed it to proceed, to a limited extent, independently of actors and their political preferences. Given the truth commission’s efforts to make transitional justice public and inform and educate wider public opinion, the chapter concludes that the performance of transitional justice in Tunisia may have constitutive consequences by ‘cracking the past open’, even if it did not exactly proceed as it was initially planned. The chapter also covers the last phase of the truth commission, as well as some developments after its mandate ended.

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.

Process Pluralism in Transitional-Restorative Justice: Lessons from Dispute Resolution for Cultural Variations in Goals Beyond Rule of Law and Democracy Development (Argentina and Chile) This article reviews some of the key issues in transitional justice process and institutional design, based on my research and experience working and living in several post-conflict societies, and suggests that cultural and political variations in transitional justice design, practices, and processes are necessary to accomplish plural goals. The idea of process pluralism, derived from the more general fields of conflict resolution and ‘alternative dispute resolution’ in legal contexts, is an essential part of transitional justice, where multiple processes may occur simultaneously or in sequence over time (e.g. truth and reconciliation processes, with or without amnesty, prosecutions, lustration and/or more local legal and communitarian processes), depending on both individual and collective preferences and resources. Transitional justice is itself ‘in transition’ as iterative learning has developed from assessment of different processes in different contexts (post-military dictatorships, civil wars, and international and sub-national conflicts). This article draws on examples from Argentina’s and Chile’s emergence from post-military dictatorships to describe and analyze a plurality of processes, including more formal governmental processes, but also those formed by civil society groups at sub-national levels. This article suggests that ‘democracy development’ and legalistic ‘rule of law’ goals and institutional design may not necessarily be the only desiderata in transitional justice, where more than the ‘legal’ and ‘governmental’ is at stake for more peaceful human flourishing. To use an important concept from dispute resolution, the “forum must fit the fuss”, and there are many different kinds of ‘fusses’ to be dealt with in transitional justice, at different levels of society – more than legal and governmental but also social, cultural and reparative.

Despite being the most prevalent form of violence in transitional settings emerging from armed conflict or authoritarian repression, intimate partner violence (IPV) has not been explicitly addressed in the mandate or investigation of any truth commission to date. Yet, using my original Gender Violence in Truth Commissions (GVTC) database, I shockingly found that one quarter of all truth commissions include references to IPV in their final reports. This article explores the tension between the lack of explicit inclusion of IPV in transitional justice processes such as truth commissions and the appearance of these references. I first outline the theoretical argument for why IPV should be included within transitional justice mechanisms. Obstacles to explicit inclusion of IPV are then identified, such the belief that it is a “private” form of harm unrelated to armed conflict or authoritarianism. By analyzing GVTC data, I show that IPV theoretically should and practically can be addressed within transitional justice processes, at least within truth commissions, and reveal characteristics that have enabled IPV to emerge within final reports. This article is the first systematic cross-national analysis of IPV within transitional justice, and the first work specifically on IPV and truth commissions.

This chapter analyzes the comparative case study of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and key findings related to efforts to engage displaced populations at various levels, with the objective of conceptualizing a locally driven transitional justice process for Syria. The following questions were used to guide the analysis of the Liberian case: (1) Were displaced populations consulted on or involved in the design of transitional justice initiatives?; (2) Did displaced populations provide input as witnesses transitional justice processes?; (3) Were truth commission sessions convened in refugee camps?; (4) Were truth commissions convened in countries with large diaspora populations?; (5) Were information and communication technologies employed to support the involvement of displaced populations in dispersed geographic locations?; and (6) Were displaced persons appointed to positions of responsibility in transitional justice bodies and coexistence projects?

This article reflects upon the ways in which transitional justice debates and processes impacted Tunisia's transition. It explores key questions such as what demands for justice emerged in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution? Did Tunisia's transitional justice process reflect these demands? And, did international norms of transitional justice, which emerged from a field of practice that draws heavily upon European, Latin America and Sub‐Saharan experiences, but has largely excluded the Arab Middle East, serve to mediate between competing demands for justice in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution? It will be argued that transitional justice demands in Tunisia reflected a breakdown in the state–society socioeconomic bargain, which had maintained autocratic regimes since independence in 1956; however, due to the elite‐centred nature of transitional justice discourses, many transitional justice demands never resonated into mainstream transitional justice discourse. We will argue that international transitional justice entrepreneurs' attempt to import a normative framework that was ill suited to grapple with the complex legacies of socioeconomic marginalization, resulted in a growing disillusionment and disengagement from the state driven transitional justice process on the part of Tunisian society.

Post-conflict reconstruction has emerged as one the major issues of concern in Africa in the last three decades. Since the end of the Cold War following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many African countries embraced multiparty systems that expanded democratic spaces. With this came the claim to justice and consciousness on the need to reconstruct a new vision of the nation, a vision that is based on social cohesion. This led to calls for democratisation in a number of African countries as well as in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and, in particular, former Soviet Union countries. In Africa, the approach taken by different countries varied from elaborate transitional justice processes that involved truth commissions to national dialogue processes that called for political compromise without putting into place any formal transitional justice process. The articles in this supplementary issue on transitional justice discourse in post-conflict societies in Africa draw attention to diverse contextual issues on post-conflict reconstruction in the continent. These articles bring together divergent discourses, experiences, theorisations, and interpretations of transitional processes while calling for a new way of assessing truth-telling processes within the purview of legal frameworks, gender and cultural sensitivities, peace sustainability, and conflict resolution strategies in Africa. The articles open up debate on the extent to which transitional justice processes contribute to peace and sustainability in Africa, and what could be done to improve this important post-conflict reconstruction initiative.

Abstract: This article extends recent academic debates about the sociohistorical entanglements between neoliberalism and human rights by exploring transitional justice processes in Sierra Leone, which followed the country's decade-long civil war (1991-2002). It analyses the ways both the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC) drew on 'economic' discourses, variously using the concepts of 'greed', 'corruption' and 'governance' to explain the broader context of the human rights violations with which they were concerned. By critically tracing how these discourses were mobilised, this article shows that neither the SLTRC nor the SCSL challenged the neoliberal vision of human rights. Rather, each process produced a narrative about Sierra Leone's civil war that not only effaced the deleterious role of neoliberal policies in the history of the conflict but also reproduced neoliberal ideas both about conflict and the economy. In this respect, my exploration of the Sierra Leone case demonstrates the importance of paying closer attention to how 'the socioeconomic' is conceptualised and accounted for within transitional justice and broader human rights processes, especially if they are to pose a more adequate challenge to the neoliberal order. Shorter abstract: This article extends recent academic debates about the sociohistorical entanglements between neoliberalism and human rights by exploring transitional justice processes in Sierra Leone after the country's decade-long civil war. The article focuses on the ways both the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission drew on discourses of 'greed', 'corruption' and 'governance' to explain the broader socioeconomic context of the human rights violations they were concerned with. The article demonstrates these discourses did not challenge but instead reinforced neoliberal visions of human rights.

International human rights law has long ignored women’s realities, reproducing an epistemological blind spot that has impacted transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions. In the early 2000s, this blind spot was challenged by Peru’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR; Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The lessons learned in Peru about including gender in transitional justice processes have nourished the application of transitional justice in Colombia. This article examines the inclusion of a gender perspective in Peru’s CVR and highlights the advances and lessons that inform Colombia’s Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición (CEV; Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition). Furthermore, it underscores the innovative contributions of Latin American decolonial and communitarian feminisms to reframing the inclusion of gender in the context of Colombia’s CEV. We argue that these feminisms allow the recognition that “woman” is a plural subject intersected by race and class; challenge liberal feminist conceptions of gender; propose a reconceptualization of time; provide a historical explanation of the reasons behind violence against women; and give an important centrality to nature, territory, and the sacred in the explanation of violence and in peacebuilding.

Psychosocial Support for Children

The penultimate chapter offers a discussion of the prospects for a genuine transitional justice process in Syria. Chapter 10 begins with a short history of the development of the archetypal tools within the transitional justice toolkit—criminal accountability, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties, lustration, institutional reform, and guarantees of nonrecurrence—and the way in which transitional justice efforts have become increasingly internationalized. This enhanced involvement of the international community in promoting transitional justice reflects the belief—premised on historical case studies and emerging empirical research—that societies in transition must address the crimes of the past in some capacity or risk their repetition. The chapter surveys the most recent research testing these claims, which has benefited from the creation of a number of new databases gleaned from states in transition. The chapter then describes ways in which the international community has tried to prepare for a future transitional justice process in Syria even in the absence of a political transition, including by training Syrian advocates, surveying Syrian communities to understand their knowledge of transitional justice and preferences for Syria, promoting psychosocial rehabilitation and solidarity among victims, and preparing for truth-telling exercises and institutional reform measures. The conclusion suggests ways in which the international community could still promote some form of transitional justice as part of the reconstruction process, even if Assad remains in power, which seems increasingly likely.

In post-war Sierra Leone, a range of transitional justice mechanisms were implemented to address experiences of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. Much of the research on local transitional justice processes has focused on the work of organisations, failing to acknowledge how individual and communal dynamics shape and are shaped by these programs. Drawing on original fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Laura S. Martin moves beyond discussions measuring effectiveness and considers how people navigate their circumstances in conflict and post-conflict societies. Developing the idea of recognised and unrecognised transitional justice processes, Martin uses Fambul Tok as an example of a recognised local transitional justice program and shows how ordinary Sierra Leoneans appropriated Fambul Tok's agenda for their own purposes. Ultimately, this book highlights the crucial role of agency and the diverse range of actors involved in transitional justice processes. Justice, as Martin powerfully argues, is not something that happens to or for people, but is enacted by individuals and communities.

Highlighting the place and role of women in transitional justice processes draws attention to two main aspects: the need for a holistic approach to transitional justice processes, and paying attention to the sensitive nature of gender-based violence in the whole cycle of truth commissions from articulation of the mandate of the commission, composition of the commissioners, categorisation of crimes, to the writing and implementation of the final report. A feminist advocacy approach to transitional justice is framed under a critical feminist strategy that draws attention to diverse forms of human rights violations against women in situations of conflict; structures of exclusion of women�s concerns; the agency and presence of women in truth commission processes. Hence, discourse on gendering transitional justice processes has recently emerged, especially given that women have been targeted in conflict situations, giving rise to sexual and gender-based violence, and indiscriminate killing of women despite their non-combatant role. This article discusses the extent of marginalisation of cases of women�s gross human rights violations in truth commission processes, while acknowledging positive attempts made so far, through critical feminism, to include women�s concerns in these processes.

The Transitional Justice Process in the Former Yugoslavia: Long Transition, Yet Not Enough Justice

ABSTRACTThis article critically examines how multifarious levels of division among victim constituencies have shaped legal and non-legal transitional justice responses to human rights violations. It submits that this division has caused such responses to operate in accordance with the notion of being a ‘victim of’ rather than that of simply being a victim of human rights abuse per se. Expanding from this position, it proffers the theoretical viewpoint that transitional justice responses are premised on the nuanced typologies of being a victim of a particular perpetrator or being a victim of a particular harm or being a victim of particular circumstances. When determining which victims to offer redress to, which victimisers to punish and which harms to repair, these approaches have by necessity fallen back on hierarchies that favour certain victims and harms above others. This process of hierarchisation is multi-layered and involves interplay between ideological, gendered and class-based factors that place certain victims outside the reach of transitional justice discourses and processes. The exclusion of these victims, the article argues, creates an invisibilised category of victims of the peace that fail to benefit from transitional justice processes that struggle to deal with the complexity their situations present.