Human Rights and Mass Atrocities: Revisiting Transitional Justice1

Abstract

When gross violations of human rights occur in the form of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, if the United Nations era is really the age of human rights (Henkin 1996), the primary objective should be to stop them in the short run by (i) the diplomacy of conflict resolution and, if necessary, (ii) humanitarian intervention under the “the responsibility to protect.” These processes are covered in other essays in this volume. Here, I address what to do after the fact. The attempt to establish some kind principled justice after atrocities is usually known as transitional justice. Academic and other experts agree that transitional justice (or TJ) emerged as a concentrated subject of policy debate and academic study by the late 1980s and early 1990s because of two primary developments (see Roht-Arriaza and Mariezcurrena 2006; Arthur 2009; Bell 2009; Teitel 2009). First, there was the end of brutal authoritarian regimes in Latin America and various responses in that region. Second, there was the end of repressive European communism and the political space subsequently opened up for various national and international policies.