EU’S TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE POLICY, PROGRAMS AND INSTRUMENTS

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.

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.

Through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Interim Constitution of 2007, Nepal has vowed to address the conflict-era human rights violations including through adopting a credible transitional justice processes. However, the national commitments towards ensuring accountability for past human rights violations and ensuring non-repetition of such violations in future are yet to be fulfilled. In this context, the judicial activism appears to have been a silver lining in terms of taking forward the transitional justice issues. In this backdrop, this chapter aims to analyse the decisions of Supreme Court of Nepal pertaining to promoting accountability for the past human rights violations and to examine the strengths and weaknesses of judicial response in the light of victims’ right to effective remedy guaranteed under the international human rights treaties and jurisprudence. This chapter finally provides a set of suggestions towards strengthening the transitional justice process in Nepal.

Human rights violations and violent conflicts in the Niger Delta of Nigeria have elicited interest from scholars and international agencies. Although studies provide significant insights into the conflicts in the Niger Delta, the issue of transitional justice has not been adequately considered. This article examines human rights violations and transitional justice in the Niger Delta. It begins with the conceptualization of human rights violations and transitional justice. It then offers a historical contextualization of oil production in Nigeria and an overview of the human rights situation in the Niger Delta. The key argument of the article is that efforts to ensure peace in the Niger Delta have not been associated with an effective transitional justice system. Since transitional justice is a requirement for sustainable peace after periods of gross human rights violations and violent conflict, efforts should be made to put transitional justice mechanisms in place to punish perpetrators of human rights violations and provide redress for victims.

Since the end of the Cold War, democratic governance gradually has increased in most African countries with the end of one-party systems, the organization of multiparty elections, and a general opening of the political space. Despite ongoing crises in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, and the Sudan, violent conflicts in Africa have decreased by half in the 2000s, compared to the mid-1990s.1 These positive developments were facilitated by the adoption of comprehensive continental and subregional peace and security, as well as governance frameworks, which contribute to strengthening African countries’ commitment to sustainable peace as well as principles of human rights and the rule of law. As part of these efforts, transitional justice processes illustrate African countries’ efforts to address past human rights violations while moving toward more peaceful and democratic societies. The United Nations defines transitional justice as “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.”2 In Africa, transitional justice processes have been proposed or implemented in approximately twenty countries that made use of transitional justice mechanisms in various instances: to transition from war to peace; from authoritarian rule to democracy; but also in the absence of clear transition from a particular conflict situation and undemocratic rule to peace and democracy.

This paper examines the similarities and differences of the legal discourses on the prohibition of retroactive laws within the European human rights framework, and more broadly, a temporal framework that accompanies questions of historical injustice. The paper considers the significance of the notion of retrospective justice in post-1989 Europe, and more specifically in Germany and Poland. From a criminal law perspective the idea of punishing people for an act that was not a crime at the time of commission is regarded as reprehensible. However, a different temporal narrative was evoked with the fall of Communism in 1989 that was based on responses to atrocities committed during the Second World War. The paper outlines the legal context that frames retrospective justice, nationally and regionally, and considers the importance of permitting the law to work retroactively. By examining certain aspects of the German and Polish experiences, the paper concurs that retrospective justice in post-Communist Europe contributes a specific set of problems to the field of transitional justice, none of which sit comfortably with one solution, and all of which demonstrate that narratives on select chapters of Communist histories remain unfinished. The narratives also show that transitional criminal justice has taken on a permanent character in legal discourses, in which retrospective justice takes on a dynamic meaning. Key words: Retrospective justice; Retroactive laws; Transitional justice; East Germany; Poland; Border guards; Martial law; Judicial immunity; European Court of Human Rights; Gustav Radbruch; Polish constitutional tribunal

This article analyses the Indonesian efforts to resolve past human rights abuses under the mechanism of transitional justice following the downfall of President Soeharto on May 21, 1998. The focus of analysis is the implementation of transitional justice in the cases of Aceh, Papua, and East Timor during the transitional period. This article shows that the efforts to enforce transitional justice in these cases have been faced with obstacles. Although there have been notable efforts in terms of both judicial and non-judicial to enforce transitional justice, the final results are not satisfactory. Transitional justice mechanism to resolve past human rights abuses was implemented only with half-baked and supported with half-hearted. As a result, it has failed to bring justice for the victims. There are lessons can and should be learned from these transitional justice cases for resolving other past human rights abuse cases in Indonesia today. The current Indonesian government should pay attention to the lessons in order to resolve past human rights violations in accordance with its promise during presidential election campaign in 2014. Otherwise, it is likely to repeat the same mistake and failure of justice dealing with past human rights violations.

The economic and social dimension of transitional justice has been largely ignored in favour of traditional emphasis on violations of civil and political rights. While early transitional justice processes mainly focused on criminal prosecutions for bodily integrity violations, socioeconomic issues, including economica and social rights (herein ESRs) violations, were seen just as part of background. However, scholarship and practitioners are increasingly calling to include ESRs violations in transitional justice processes. Indeed, economic and social conditions are frequently linked to human rights abuses, often constituting a cause, means or consequence of conflict and authoritarianism. Including the assessment of ESRs violations as an issue for transitional justice might serve the purpose of establishing a more comprehensive understanding of the root causes of past human rights violations as well as to facilitate the pathway to achieve a sustainable peace.

This chapter outlines some of the key debates, challenges and practices of victims and victimology in transitional justice. It begins by discussing who is a victim for the purposes of transitional justice, and the reality of recognition of victimization in the aftermath of mass atrocities. The chapter explores the role of victims in transitional justice processes and mechanisms through the three main rights to justice, truth and reparation, as well as the emerging fourth pillar of transitional justice: guarantees of non-repetition. Victimology is concerned with the study of victimisation, examining how harm impacts victims and wider society, as well as assessing victimisation’s causes, extent and consequences. Domestic criminology and victimology for ordinary crimes have highlighted the plight of victims whose interests have been neglected, and the conflict between perpetrators and themselves ‘stolen’ by the state. In the field of transitional justice, justice is often cited as a key demand of victims of gross violations of human rights and international crimes.

Within the study and practice of transitional justice, the roles played by the arts in addressing past human rights violations have become increasingly well accepted. This article examines the role of the arts in Cambodia’s transitional justice process, from the initial coupling of attempts to revive the arts with the pursuit of human rights in the early 1980s to the reparations orders provided by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). It identifies five main contributions the arts may make to transitional justice processes—evidence, complementary justice, outreach, activism, and critique—and demonstrates not only that various art forms have assumed each of these roles in Cambodia but also that this case extends the place of the arts in transitional justice. In particular, by highlighting the role played by local activists in seeking to revive the arts in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge period, this article reveals the significance of arts initiatives, instigated in the absence of a formal justice process, for formal processes once they eventually emerge. In doing so, it argues that without the arts initiatives and activism that preceded it, the formal inclusion of the arts in the ECCC process would not have been possible.

Objectives: The importance of the study stems from the fact that the region with all its countries, including Iraq, was and still lacks political stability, whether due to internal factors or external influences, or the conciliation of workers, and since transitional justice is an important idea, and essential in managing the stages of change, a solid democratic state that concerns everyone and cares, Everyone participates, from here, and through the centrality of the issue of change and the importance of the issue of transitional justice in it, and through the fact that the transitional experience in Iraq is a practical experience that took place early in the region, and in a pluralistic society that reflects the previous regime in which there are many features, and common to most of the prevailing political systems in the region This makes the study of his experience in this topic and the problems he encountered a suitable case for a useful study with an impact on more than one level. The research paper aims to study the negative aspects of Iraq's experience in the field of transitional justice, and its transformation from a transitional justice case into a tool of factional and partisan revenge, whose procedures are marred by a lot of arbitrariness, which makes the topic useful for those who work to implement these programs in the future in order to avoid problems and mistakes . Methods : The study adopts an analytical, inductive approach that relies on uncovering facts by starting from the details, then proceeds gradually to laws, general rules, and the college, where the Iraqi experience, its details, and the internal and external influences that accompanied it will be examined, down to the features and features And the facts of this experience, especially the negative aspects of it that affected the state of stability and construction in it, and this is particularly evident by analyzing the trends, paths, and problematic of transitional justice interventions in the current political transformations in Iraq after 2003, because understanding the course of the struggle for power and the influence between the components It will help us understand the dimensions of the competition for power and influence between these political blocs that represented the Iraqi opposition during the days of the political system under the rule of the (Baath Party) before its fall in 2003. By perpetuating the phenomenon of competition and conflict between political blocs, including the perpetuation of two phenomena: The first is uncertainty about the possibility of renewed violence in the future. The second is the intense competition over how to institutionalize the balance of power in Iraq after 2003. Results: The failure of transitional justice in Iraq, and the failure to implement its real mechanisms that do not contradict human rights principles, was the reason for Iraq to reach its current stage, and the increase in impunity and injustice of persons who were not the cause of committing any human rights violations. The results indicate that the last feature is indeed important because the deep partisan motives linked mainly to sectarianism, ethnicity, nationalism, and to a lesser extent regionalism, are the main determinants of the competition between the Iraqi political blocs that took over the rule of Iraq after 2003. The reasonable explanation is that a sense of the narrow political and partisan gains of these Iraqi political blocs may compensate for the debts owed due to past violations and urge a preference for avoiding the pursuit of truth or punishment for fear that political gains may be threatened in some way. Conclusions : Failure to resort to fair legal accountability causes new human rights violations, so the following question can be raised: Does ignoring legal accountability increase the number of perpetrators of violations, and help some of the perpetrators in the previous regime to get away from punishment, and wrong others? And that the negative engagement in transitional justice file, ignoring legal mechanisms, and to obey the wishes of the party, and lead to factional influence in the political process and thus stumble in the democratic transition? Keywords : Democratic political Iraqi punishment transitional justice damage construction DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-6-03 Publication date: March 31 st 2021

A recent United Nations report on North Korea reports of widespread human rights violations inside North Korea.1 The right to life, liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and assembly are regularly violated by the government and its agents.2 Over the years, many people have been subjected to detention, torture, and forced labor in government-operated detention camps in North Korea. Oppressive rule is always associated with gross violations of human rights. One of the challenges that a unified democratic Korea would have to face is how to deal with human rights violations perpetrated in the past. In transitional justice literature relating to societies transitioning from oppressive and authoritarian rule or conflict to democratic governance, one of the major points of discussion is always what to do with perpetrators of past human rights violations when conflicts or oppressive regimes have ended. The United Nations has a long history of assisting societies devastated by conflict or emerging from repressive rule to reestablish the rule of law and develop mechanisms to deal with large-scale human rights violations. For the United Nations, transitional justice is the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale human rights abuses, in order to ensure accountability for the abuses, serve justice, and achieve reconciliation and the transformation of society to establish a democratic society that is underpinned by human rights values.3

This volume is an inter-disciplinary scholarly resource bringing together contributions from writers, experienced academics and practitioners working in fields such as human rights, humanitarian law, public policy, psychology, cultural and peace studies, and earth jurisprudence. This collection of essays presents the most up to date knowledge and status of the field of transitional justice, and also highlights the emerging debates in this area, which are often overseen and underdeveloped in the literature. The volume provides a wide coverage of the arguments relating to controversial issues emanating from different regions of the world. The book is divided into four parts which groups different aspects of the problems and issues facing transitional justice as a field, and its processes and mechanisms more specifically. Part I concentrates on the traditional means and methods of dealing with past gross abuses of power and political violence. In this section, the authors also expand and often challenge the ways that these processes and mechanisms are conceptualised and introduced. Part II provides a forum for the contributors to share their first hand experiences of how traditional and customary mechanisms of achieving justice can be effectively utilised. Part III includes a collection of essays which challenges existing transitional justice models and provides new lenses to examine the formal and traditional processes and mechanisms. It aims to expose insufficiencies and some of the inherent practical and jurisprudential problems facing the field. Finally, Part IV, looks to the future by examining what remedies can be available today for abuses of rights of the future generations and those who have no standing to claim their rights, such as the environment. Since the late 1980s massive political and legal transformations have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southern Africa, which has challenged many of the presumptions of legal and political foundations of a nation-state including the questions of how to build a nation-state in divided societies or the role of law in democracy building in the face of such massive societal changes driven by a holistic mix of players. This process is by no means over as one can judge but the most current ‘Arab Spring’ or even the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ type of movements across the world, including in the developed states. Participators of these events call for their rights to be upheld and protected; some others lobby for new rights to be recognised and realised. These worldwide phenomena challenge the existing international (legal and political) system and call for some novel and innovative means by which the new challenges can be addressed. Despite the vastness of research done on the subject matter this monograph suggests an innovative, if not challenging, way of utilising what the field of transitional justice has acquired in the process of examining how societies deal with past abuses to meet victims’ legitimate expectations of justice, truth and reparation. This manuscript will look to expand the field even further by suggesting that there are emerging fields which will, and in some instances already have, influenced the way we think about human rights in a global context. It will set forth new dimensions in conceptualising human rights and how their current and future instances of abuse can be addressed. This is a call to look ahead and into the future by trying to define the inadequacies of the current international system in recognising emerging trends. Understanding the world-wide developments, even if not yet fully legally defined, contributes to the work on combating impunity and ensuring respect for victims’ rights. As it is widely accepted that societies have different means of dealing with past (human) rights abuses thus it would be sensible to suggest that widening understanding of the relationship and cross-reference between the different fields and branches of international legal and political scholarship (all which affect human rights field) should also be encouraged. The Changing International Landscape of Transitional Justice: Emerging Trends and Issues will be a scholarly resource bringing together current knowledge and debates in the field and developing the many areas that are currently underdeveloped in the literature. The book will provide full coverage of the arguments relating to hot topics and controversial issues (e.g. hybrid threats, ecocide, ecological jurisprudence, case studies by practitioners from the human rights field). The invited contributors are all experienced academic writers and practitioners in their respective areas of expertise (law, politics, public policy, cultural studies).

Helping societies affected by conflict or emerging from oppressive rule to restore the rule of law and come to terms with widespread human rights abuses, particularly in the context of broken institutions, depleted resources, deteriorating security, and public anxiety and disunity, represents an enormous the problem Transitional justice aims to ensure recognition of victims, strengthen individuals' trust in state institutions, strengthen respect for human rights and promote the rule of law as a step towards reconciliation and prevention of further violations. Transitional justice processes have repeatedly demonstrated that they can help resolve problems and differences. To this end, such processes should be context-specific, state-responsive, and victim-focused. Then they can unite, empower and transform societies and thus contribute to lasting peace. For the United Nations system and structure, transitional justice is the full range of processes and mechanisms involved in society's attempt to come to terms with the legacy of massive past abuses in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. Transitional justice processes and mechanisms are a critical component of the United Nations system and structure to strengthen the rule of law. United Nations rule of law and transitional justice activities include developing standards and best practices, assisting in the development and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms, providing technical, material and financial support, and promoting the mainstreaming of human rights and transitional justice in peace agreements.

Helping societies affected by conflict or emerging from oppressive rule to restore the rule of law and come to terms with widespread human rights abuses, particularly in the context of broken institutions, depleted resources, deteriorating security, and public anxiety and disunity, represents an enormous the problem Transitional justice aims to ensure recognition of victims, strengthen individuals' trust in state institutions, strengthen respect for human rights and promote the rule of law as a step towards reconciliation and prevention of further violations. Transitional justice processes have repeatedly demonstrated that they can help resolve problems and differences. To this end, such processes should be context-specific, state-responsive, and victim-focused. Then they can unite, empower and transform societies and thus contribute to lasting peace. For the United Nations system and structure, transitional justice is the full range of processes and mechanisms involved in society's attempt to come to terms with the legacy of massive past abuses in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. Transitional justice processes and mechanisms are a critical component of the United Nations system and structure to strengthen the rule of law. United Nations rule of law and transitional justice activities include developing standards and best practices, assisting in the development and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms, providing technical, material and financial support, and promoting the mainstreaming of human rights and transitional justice in peace agreements.