Connecting Truth Commissions, Socioeconomic Harms and Child Participation

While truth commissions have become the ‘go to’ response in the aftermath of violent conflict and human rights abuses, serious critical discussion on the extent to which commissions have tended to shape and reify the identities of victims and perpetrators and obscure the reality of structural culpability is only tentatively emerging in the field. Drawing on the literature from the field of transitional justice, this article critically interrogates the relationship between truth commissions and the three key constituencies of victims, perpetrators and structural actors. It suggests that binary oppositions between victims and perpetrators are frequently privileged, resulting in hierarchal conceptions of innocent victims and guilty perpetrators. These polarized categories fail to reflect the complexity of conflict and promote easy and uncritical allocations of blame and responsibility. It also argues that the capacity of truth commissions to engage with structural actors and the structural causes of conflict is limited due to the influence of human rights and criminal justice on transitional justice and an individualized focus on violations of civil and political rights. An impunity gap is thus created, eliding broader patterns of institutional complicity and responsibility for structural violence, while the focus on civil and political rights violations creates further hierarchies of harm and hierarchies of victimization. The paper concludes that greater recognition of the complexity of identity and involvement in conflict is required to provide a more honest reflection on the past and a more sustainable link between truth telling and peace building.

Psychosocial Support for Children

This article examines the various points at which accountability for economic crimes, including large-scale corruption, intersects with accountability for human rights violations. To date, transitional justice has largely compartmentalized legacies of abuse into those based on a narrow set of human rights violations and those based on economic crimes, which the author argues is an inadequate way to address both sets of abuses. Because corruption and human rights violations are mutually reinforcing forms of abuse, the field of transitional justice should approach economic crimes in the same way it approaches civil and political rights violations. The author suggests that traditional transitional justice mechanisms would be strengthened by an engagement with corruption and economic crimes, which would allow for both sources of impunity to be confronted.

Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (the ‘MMIWG Inquiry’) is the latest truth-seeking body to grapple with legacies of violence against indigenous peoples in settler colonial states. While the name, Missing and Murdered, ostensibly limits its scope of application to bodily integrity crimes, the MMIWG Inquiry instead embraced an expansive understanding of violence to encompass gross violations of indigenous cultural rights and cultural harm more generally. This article argues that this holistic approach represents a stark departure from mainstream transitional justice models which have overwhelmingly prioritised the redress of a limited set of civil and political rights violations, while neglecting the underlying structural violence and cultural harm that permeates divided societies. This article advances a case to understand the MMIWG Inquiry as a transitional justice mechanism and draws upon its Final Report to analyse how truth commissions can engage with cultural rights violations in more meaningful ways. By directly and robustly accounting for indigenous cultural harm, the MMIWG Inquiry challenged the conventional parameters of the field and demonstrated the opportunity and utility of addressing cultural rights violations through a transitional justice framework.

To date, only sparse attention has been afforded to the potential and realized intersections between transitional justice and cultural rights. Despite a range of advancements and interventions, cultural rights have long been a blind spot in the field of transitional justice, one that has yet to be thoroughly interrogated on either a theoretical or practical level. This is at odds with a demonstrated willingness to challenge transitional justice’s preoccupation with bodily integrity crimes, and civil and political rights violations more generally. This chapter attempts to interrogate this blind spot by analysing the engagement of cultural rights in both the discourse and practice and transitional justice. In the field’s constantly growing and evolving discourse, cultural rights are routinely omitted, backgrounded, or discussed without reference to State obligations under international human rights law. Cultural rights are likewise marginalized in transitional justice practice. This is especially the case with cultural rights violations, or cultural wrongs more generally, which are not confronted and redressed in the same manner as other human rights violations. At the same time, cultural rights are not wholly absent from transitional justice and, indeed, are increasingly being addressed, respected, accommodated, and studied in interesting and significant ways. Several relatively recent developments have helped to push cultural rights increasingly towards the centre of transitional justice thinking and practice. However, these constitute clear exceptions to transitional justice’s overall antipathy towards culture and stand in stark contrast to the field’s historical marginalization of cultural rights.

This dissertation is about how democracies can respond to economic crises. At its centre is the dilemma that political elites, and societies as a whole, face after such an event –whether to focus exclusively on forward-looking policies that secure a recovery or whether to also address the underlying causes of the crisis, learning the lessons of the past but also weathering the divisiveness and recrimination this exercise is likely to elicit. To engage with this dilemma, this research takes inspiration from the field of transitional justice on how societies can deal with the past, and learn from it. Of special interest are the mechanisms of transitional justice. Truth commissions most prominently, but also prosecutions, reparations, and constitutional reforms. The analysis moves from a cross-country comparison of truth commissions deployed in Iceland, Ireland, and Greece after the Great Recession, to a case study of a comprehensive range of mechanisms deployed in Iceland, to an impact assessment of the most effective of the three truth commission. I will argue that the transitional justice framework brings helpful and practical insights when applied to the study of economic crises in established democracies. It challenges the conventional wisdom that ‘business as usual’ will prevail after an economic crisis; it also yields principles for designing mechanisms that promote learning from the past and building-in better practices in the future.

This book explores the challenges of transitional justice in West Africa, specifically how countries in the region have dealt with transitional justice problems in the last 30 years (1990–2020), and how they have managed the process. Using comparative, historical, and legal analyses it examines the politics of justice after violent conflicts in West Africa, the major transitional justice mechanisms established in the region, and how countries have used these institutions to address injustice and the pains of war in some West African countries. The book examines how transitional justice mechanisms have contributed to victims’ rights, reconciliation, and peace in transitional societies, and whether transitional justice mechanisms deployed in West Africa were suitable or ill-fitted, and the politics of deploying them. The book is addressed to a wide audience: policymakers, and graduate and post-graduate students of transitional justice, conflict resolution, peace studies, conflict transformation, international criminal law, law and similar subjects. This book will be of great value to academics and researchers, as well as lecturers in tertiary institutions offering relevant courses; legal practitioners; peace practitioners/NGOs; and those working in the field of transitional justice and human rights.

This book considers the efficacy of transitional justice mechanisms in response to corporate human rights abuses. Corporations and other business enterprises often operate in countries affected by conflict or repressive regimes. As such, they may become involved in human rights violations and crimes under international law ‒ either as the main perpetrators or as accomplices by aiding and abetting government actors. Transitional justice mechanisms, such as trials, truth commissions, and reparations, have usually focused on abuses by state authorities or by non-state actors directly connected to the state, such as paramilitary groups. Innovative transitional justice mechanisms have, however, now started to address corporate accountability for human rights abuses and crimes under international law and have attempted to provide redress for victims. This book analyzes this development, assessing how transitional justice can provide remedies for corporate human rights abuses and crimes under international law. Canvassing a broad range of literature relating to international criminal law mechanisms, regional human rights systems, domestic courts, truth and reconciliation commissions, and land restitution programmes, this book evaluates the limitations and potential of each mechanism. Acknowledging the limited extent to which transitional justice has been able to effectively tackle the role of corporations in human rights violations and international crimes, this book nevertheless points the way towards greater engagement with corporate accountability as part of transitional justice. A valuable contribution to the literature on transitional justice and on business and human rights, this book will appeal to scholars, researchers and PhD students in these areas, as well as lawyers and other practitioners working on corporate accountability and transitional justice.

Una de las tendencias más notables de las últimas décadas en el campo de la justicia transicional –el ajuste de cuentas colectivo con los legados de violación de los derechos humanos después de dictaduras o conflictos violentos– es, sin duda, el auge de las llamadas “comisiones de la verdad”. Con la creciente inversión política en comisiones de la verdad, y con la celebración de la verdad histórica a nivel mundial, la historia se ha trasladado al centro de la escena de la gestión ético-política del pasado colectivo. Sin embargo, este enfoque en la historia está lejos de ser una virtud obvia y plantea una pregunta simple pero importante: ¿por qué Estados que emergen de un periodo de violencia en los últimos tiempos han recurrido a la historia con el fin de alcanzar la unidad nacional y la reconciliación? La respuesta a esta pregunta, propondré, debe buscarse en la relación de la historia con una determinada “política del tiempo”. En lugar de interpretar la política de transición en términos de una oposición entre el recuerdo y el olvido, como es costumbre, mostraré que el campo actual de la justicia transicional representa un espacio de disputa para dos maneras contrastantes de recordar que se fundamentan en características temporales opuestas. Las comisiones de la verdad no se apropian de cualquier clase de recuerdo al azar, sino que apelan específicamente a la historia o, más exactamente, a cierto discurso de la historia. Una vez introducido en el campo de la justicia transicional, este discurso de la historia tiende a entrar en conflicto con la memoria o, más exactamente, con cierto tipo de memoria. La historia, sostengo, se introduce en el campo de la justicia transicional no a pesar de una memoria ya superabundante, sino a causa de ella; y el conflicto entre ambas se centra en diferentes concepciones del tiempo y de la relación entre el pasado y el presente. Utilizaré ejemplos de la Comisión Sudafricana para la Verdad y Reconciliación y de la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación de Sierra Leona.

Violence against sexual and gender minorities in periods of conflict and social unrest has received increased attention by the international media. While much has been written on anti-queer violence and oppression of sexual and gender minorities around the world, there has been very little written in regard to addressing historical and current acts of violence in transitional justice literature. In light of ongoing violence, what would the incorporation of sexual and gender minority experiences in transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth and reconciliation commissions, mean for sexual and gender minorities? Can truth commissions be a viable structure for addressing historical and continuing anti-queer violence and discrimination? In trying to construct a truthful account of anti-queer violence and the subjugation of sexual and gender minorities, how would a national truth commission address the diversity of locations, times, and fluid sexual and gender subject positions and narratives? I seek to address these questions by examining the challenges that truth commissions face in including the experiences of sexual and gender minorities. First I will review how previous truth and reconciliation commissions have addressed heterosexism, homophobia, and anti-queer violence. From there I will explore the underlying heteronormativity inherently found in truth and reconciliation commissions and ways in which truth commissions would benefit from incorporating queer theory and queer legal theory. Lastly, I will outline key steps that need to be taken for future truth commissions to better incorporate sexual and gender minorities in order to open up truth commissions to non-heteronormative and queer identities, histories, and experiences.

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. …

Transitional justice has addressed only conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) while excluding sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA). This exclusion persists despite both SEA and CRSV occurring during armed conflict, taking the same forms, impacting congruent victim populations, and falling within the Women, Peace and Security framework. SEA is perpetrated by international intervenors such as peacekeepers and aid workers. Excluding SEA denies victims a critical pathway to accountability and undermines prevention efforts for all forms of sexual violence. Using the original Gender Violence in Truth Commissions database, this article examines why SEA is excluded from transitional justice. To date, only two transitional justice mechanisms—the Sierra Leonian and Liberian truth commissions—have addressed SEA by intervenors. Analysis of these two exceptional cases reveals barriers to inclusion of SEA within transitional justice, including intervenor-involvement in transitional justice mechanisms, issues with SEA reporting and data, and dependency on media coverage and public outcry. The article concludes with policy recommendations for addressing SEA and CRSV as separate but related violations through transitional justice mechanisms, including truth commissions and reparations programmes.

Transitional justice ideas, processes, and institutions offer post-conflict and tormented societies the glimmer of hope of a more stable future erected upon values of the rule of law, accountability, justice, post-conflict reconstruction, and development. Societies wracked by violence see transitional justice as offering the tools to midwife a democratic, rule-of-law state. Broadly speaking, transitional justice can be said to be concerned with how societies address legacies of past human rights abuses, mass atrocity, or other forms of severe social trauma, including genocide or civil war, in order to build a more democratic, just, and peaceful future. Epistemically, the field of transitional justice is variegated, comprising theoretical debates, the comparative assessment of domestic accountability schemes, international criminal justice, the study of truth commissions, and ethical-legal debates concerning the morality of compromise on accountability for gross and systemic violations of human rights. Several subthemes to the discipline suggest the absence of complete coherence in its characterization and praxis. The focus of this article on transitional justice in Africa domesticates the exploration of the subject matter in the African experience. Transitional justice in the African context takes on a special character and orientation. While the core objective of transitional justice praxis in Africa remains similar to transitional justice orthodoxy in the international context—namely, the fight against impunity and the push for accountability and post-conflict reconstruction and development—the emerging consensus points to the effective realization of socioeconomic justice, gender justice, and the right to development as equally critical, if not central, to the redress of past injustices. Instrumental to the successful delivery of this broadened set of objectives is a combination of traditional and nontraditional frameworks embedded in a wide range of laws, policies, institutions, and community norms and customs. In combination, they present the rough contours of an African model and mechanism for not only dealing with the legacies of conflicts and violations of human rights, but also addressing governance deficits and developmental challenges in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063. This article is structured around a number of themes aimed at deepening appreciation of the field of transitional justice in Africa, namely: Transitional Justice Laws, Policies, and Norms; Transitional Justice Accountability Systems; criminal accountability in Africa’s transitional justice praxis; Human Rights, Democracy, and Governance; Decolonization and Postcoloniality; Conflict and Transitional Justice; Transitional Justice Goals and Outcomes; Reimagining the Field of Transitional Justice; and journals publishing on transitional justice.

Maintaining the importance of socio-economic issues in devising transitional justice mechanisms, this book examines the widespread practice of land grabbing in Afghanistan. On 3 September 2003, 100 armed police officers bulldozed around 30 homes in the Sherpur neighborhood of Kabul, Afghanistan, evicting over 250 people. Historically, the land was part of the property of the Ministry of Defense, of which a zone was allocated to the ministry's employees who had built homes and had lived there for nearly 30 years. After the demolition, however, the land was distributed among 300 high-ranking government officials, including ministers, deputy ministers, governors and other powerful warlords. Land grabbing in Afghanistan has become a widespread practice across the country. Based on over 50 semi-structured interviews with key informants and group discussions with war victims and local experts in Kabul, the current book examines the relevance of transitional justice discourse and practice in response to this situation. Following a critical criminological concern with social harm, the book maintains that it is not enough to consider a country's political history of violent conflict and the violation of civil and political rights alone. Rather, to decide on appropriate transitional justice mechanisms, it is crucial to consider a country's socio-economic background, and above all the socio-economic harm inflicted on people during periods of violent conflict. This original and detailed account of the socio-economic challenges faced by transitional justice mechanisms will be of interest to those studying and working in this area in law, politics, development studies and criminology.

This chapter considers the impact of transitional justice mechanisms on intergroup conflict. Specifically, it discusses two of the most popular and large-scale transitional justice methods, namely, justice-based mechanisms and truth commissions. The chapter not only explores arguments about how these mechanisms can improve intergroup relations but also considers the limitations associated with each. It argues that transitional justice mechanisms can create a context where intergroup relations can be fostered, but equally they carry risks and could aggravate intergroup conflict. The chapter concludes that multiple transitional justice mechanisms are needed in societies moving out of conflict (e.g., justice-based approaches, reparations, and truth commissions), but that transitional justice processes are only part of what is needed to address intergroup conflict. Complementary processes are necessary to maximize the impact of transitional justice mechanisms on intergroup relations, and vice versa. Such processes include ensuring social justice and sustaining programs aimed at addressing intergroup conflict (e.g., dialogue, contact, reconciliation programs).