Introducing the Transitional Justice Evaluation Tools (TJET) database

The delicate process of constitution-making during transition covers a range of issues, but usually features questions on how to address past human rights violations, change repressive laws, recognise basic rights and reform state institutions. Hence, the constitution-making process can have significant implications on the transitional justice mechanisms that are adopted and how they are implemented. In the case of Ghana, the 1992 Constitution came into force after decades of political instability. On 28 April 1992, a draft constitution for Ghana’s fourth republic was approved in a referendum. As part of the transitional provisions in the 1992 Constitution, amnesty provisions were enshrined to protect members of all previous military regimes from prosecution. However, the 1992 Constitution did not contain express provisions for initiation of other transitional justice mechanisms. In a bid to reflect on the rarely examined relationship between transitional justice mechanisms and constitutionalism, this paper shall examine Ghana’s amnesty laws, truth commission and reparative measures in relation to the constitution-making process and constitutional norms. The paper opines that as separate processes towards a common end, proper synchronisation of Ghana’s transitional justice processes and constitution-making could have shaped the country’s transitional justice mechanisms in the right direction towards achieving their perceived goals.

Does the implementation of transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms such as trials, truth commissions, and institutional reforms reduce corruption by enhancing accountability, building trust, and creating a culture of deterrence? Although prior work has studied whether economic crimes should be included in TJ agendas, TJ’s potential to address corruption has been mostly overlooked. On the one hand, theory suggests that TJ could reduce corruption; yet, on the other, it indicates that TJ mechanisms are not effective enough at solving deep-rooted corruption. Testing these opposing arguments using data from 106 postconflict countries that experienced conflict between 1946 and 2006, I find that the implementation of TJ and corruption are not statistically associated. However, when I further investigate this relationship with only “well-implemented” TJ mechanisms, purges are found to be negatively associated with political corruption and amnesties are positively associated with regime corruption.

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.

This book engages the limits of transitional justice and, more specifically, the interface between transitional justice and the related concept of transformative justice. Challenging and developing the work of transitional justice scholars and practitioners, the book addresses both the limitations of existing mechanisms in contexts where they are currently applied, as well as the possibilities for using, or adapting, transitional justice mechanisms in contexts typically viewed as outside their usual remit. More specifically, chapters address shortcomings with regard to victim participation in transitional justice mechanisms in Cambodia; consider how the transformative justice framework might be mobilised to overcome limitations of standard approaches to transitional justice in addressing structural violence in post-conflict Colombia; and address how the concept of transformative justice could be used to address historical wrongs in post-apartheid South Africa and post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. Further chapters explore the intersections of identity and culture with transitional and transformative justice, consider the role of elites in transitional and transformative justice, and put forward the case for applying a broader approach to historical truth telling than is typical in transitional justice.

Much of the time, transitional justice measures are developed alongside the implementation of peace agreements and peacebuilding efforts, and are expected by their framers and advocates to contribute to peace. The claim is that accountability measures can help to deter future violence and prevent revenge attacks, demonstrate and help to reinstall the rule of law and democracy, and contribute in so doing to longer-term stability. And indeed, transitional justice measures are expected to work alongside specific measures of peacebuilding, such as rule of law promotion, security sector reform, and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of excombatants, and increasingly those developing such measures of peacebuilding are expected to take transitional justice measures into account. What happens, however, when a transitional justice measure is developed decades after the end of the conflict, where such standard measures of peacebuilding were not pursued, or are incomplete? Can a transitional justice mechanism have the desired effects? And what if that mechanism is not designed to address the wide range of past crimes, but a more recent subset? This chapter considers the prospects for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to have any serious impact on the country itself, against the backdrop of long-term, but unconsolidated, peacebuilding or reconstruction efforts. It argues that while Lebanon has undergone extensive reconstruction since the end of its brutal civil war, no serious peacebuilding efforts were undertaken, meaning that many of the changes a post-conflict society is expected to undergo, arising from demobilization of large numbers of fighters, reform of the justice and security sector, did not take place. In this context, accountability for the abuses of the war and in the 15 years after it in which the country was under Syrian occupation has yet to take place and seems unlikely. The STL is nonetheless often expected to operate as a mechanism analogous to ordinary transitional justice mechanisms, yet it does not have the remit to address the legacy of conflict and occupation, but rather only the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and related assassinations. It seems unlikely that it can have the effect expected of transitional justice mechanisms and ascribed by its advocates to it as well, of promoting human rights and accountability, and even peacebuilding, in the affected country. Rather, after two decades of reconstruction, the tribunal is unlikely to contribute to peace, and may run the risk of promoting conflict should it try defendants, whether in person or in absentia.

Psychosocial Support for Children

The third wave of democratization has meant the end of autocratic rule and oppressive state-sponsored practices in many countries around the world. Yet the transition from authoritarianism and state-sponsored terror to more open and participatory societies has its own imperatives. After autocratic rule and protracted conflicts, it is necessary to heal the wounds caused by years, sometimes decades, of mistrust, fear, and violence. Systematic violations of human rights, in the form of oppression, physical and psychological violence, and death, leave lasting individual and collective wounds. Transitional (or restorative) justice is designed to address and (hopefully) mitigate such legacies left by the previous regime. In doing so, it draws on a variety of instruments: criminal prosecutions, special tribunals, amnesties, apologies, memorials, lustrations, and truth commissions (TCs), among others. The end of the Cold War also gave a new impetus to international criminal justice. Special tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, for Rwanda, and for Sierra Leone were established, as was, most prominently, the International Criminal Court, originated in the 1999 Rome Treaty and based in The Hague. For many, this portends a major shift in international relations, one in which the traditional, Westphalian, and sovereignty-centered international system gives way to another, based on more porous units, in which individual and human rights have more sway and human rights abuses trigger a more proactive international reaction. In turn, these developments have given rise to a whole new field of study: transitional justice. This is an interdisciplinary field in which political science, law, sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, theology, and other disciplines converge. Not surprisingly, since transitional justice emerges as a result of the developments described above, it is, much like democratization and political transitions, also marked by contingency and paradox. Transitions are fluid and political action and the uses of the law find themselves under a different set of rules than under ordinary circumstances. Grasping the transformative opportunities presented by the conjuncture becomes a key test of political leadership. (1) Truth commissions have emerged as a popular tool of transitional justice, especially in cases where a delicate balance between the extant remnants of the previous regime coexist with the new dispensation. (2) TCs have come to the fore because of their flexibility, their open-endedness, and their ability to act as a bridge of sorts between an evil past and a democratic present, thus laying the foundations for a future society at peace with itself. At first, transitional justice was mainly concerned with transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. However, after the large number of internal conflicts that arose in the post-Cold War era, it has also been applied within the wider panoply of nation- and peacebuilding instruments following the end of a war or conflict. This has been especially true for Africa. Some transitional justice tools, like TCs, have shown to be so prevalent and useful for a variety of reasons that they are now deployed in advanced Western democracies, like Canada, to investigate historical human rights abuses as well as to investigate the conditions that led to the breakdown of democracy, as happened with the TC set up in Honduras after the June 2009-January 2010 crisis. Especially in Latin America and Africa, TCs as well as truth and reconciliation commissions have been deployed to come to terms with past injustices while rebuilding trust in government and among social groups, although they have also been deployed in Asia, Europe, and North America. (3) While they share a number of common features, TCs must reflect local specificities to address the crimes of the past amidst the fluid, uncertain, and challenging conditions that are the hallmark of democratic transitions. …

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.

Transitional Justice and Ireland's Legacy of Historical Abuse James Gallen (bio) This essay evaluates the application of transitional justice to the context of historical abuse in peaceful, consolidated democracies, in particular the Republic of Ireland.1 Examining Ireland's efforts at repairing its past from such a perspective reveals an unwillingness by state authorities and Christian churches and religious orders to embrace the necessity of fundamental social, legal, and political transformation when addressing widespread and systemic historical abuse.2 In Irish efforts to address historical abuse across a range of contexts, power remains out of the hands of victim-survivors and of those traditionally marginalized in society. Instead, in agreement with Georges Balandier, I argue that "the supreme ruse of power is to allow itself to be contested ritually in order to consolidate itself more effectively."3 Recent state responses to historical abuse contribute to such a consolidation of power. Although public inquiries, legal accountability, and redress schemes claim to serve the interests of victim-survivors of historical abuse, these mechanisms fail meaningfully to empower or support their voices, participation, and ownership in shaping how [End Page 35] Ireland addresses its historical abuses. The Irish state designs mechanisms and engages in practices that marginalize victim-survivors in the present and thereby risk creating new forms of harm and distress. As a result, Irish "transitional justice" risks claiming the legitimacy of serving survivors' needs without any meaningful transition in how they are treated by the state, churches, or society. Section one of this article introduces the framework of transitional justice and considers its application to the Irish republic. Section two assesses the Irish experience of investigating and truth-seeking regarding historical abuses and draws comparisons with the "truth commission" model in transitional justice. Section three evaluates the Irish approach to accountability for historical abuses and demonstrates its limitations despite the different expectations for accountability for historical criminal and civil offenses. Finally, section four assesses Ireland's redress schemes for victim-survivors of historical abuse, drawing on approaches to reparations in transitional justice, and briefly examines Ireland's apologies regarding historical abuse and their potential impact on reform and reconciliation. Transitional Justice and Consolidated Democracies Ireland is not unique in dealing with a national legacy of past systemic violence. Although it has deployed several mechanisms since the early 2000s to address historical abuses, it has typically not employed the language or framework of transitional justice. It was only in March 2017 that TD Katherine Zappone, the minister for children and youth affairs, announced that she would initiate a transitional-justice approach to meet the needs of survivors of mother-and-baby homes (maternity homes).4 As a result, transitional justice forms only a small part of the explicit approach used by the Irish state to address its past. But transitional justice—as a body of scholarship and comparative international best practice—can also be employed as a conceptual and legal tool to evaluate the entirety of how countries such as Ireland have addressed their legacy of past violence. Transitional justice typically addresses how societies reckon with a [End Page 36] legacy of gross violations of human rights in the specific contexts of a transition from armed conflict or authoritarian rule to stable, peaceful liberal democracy.5 It includes several discrete but linked "pillars": investigation and truth-seeking (typically through truth and reconciliation commissions), accountability, reparation, guarantees of nonrecurrence, and reconciliation.6 Though a field dominated by law and lawyers, transitional-justice discourse claims to institute an interdisciplinary practice, with several ethical commitments to how justice is to be achieved; the process matters as much as the outcome.7 To this end a number of key tenets have informed scholarship and practice in this area that must be highlighted in any application of transitional justice to Ireland. First, an approach recognizing victim-survivors as legal subjects, bearers of human rights, and key participants in any decision affecting transitional justice is central to international transitional-justice policy.8 Second, each transitional-justice mechanism is designed to complement rather than compete with the others and is designed to form part of a single holistic process.9 Transitional justice is...

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.

This piece explores and critiques the project of transitional justice. It has been more than a quarter of a century since transitional justice burst onto the global stage. Over the years it has come to be billed as a panacea for addressing deeply embedded social and political dysfunction after periods of mass repression and violence. Many theorists and policy makers have argued that it is a key bridge to sustainable peace, democracy and human rights. But the historical record is not clear about a direct causal relationship between transitional justice mechanisms and specific outcomes in post-conflict societies. In some cases, truth commissions, criminal prosecutions and other transitional justice interventions appear to have given society a chance at a new and hopeful beginning. In others, conflicts have either re-emerged or been exacerbated. Which begs the question, is transitional justice the appropriate vehicle for achieving these goals? If it does not always lead to positive outcomes, why not? Are there conceptual problems and theoretical deficiencies in how we make sense of justice and transitions that account for the failures? Or is it the translation of transitional justice norms into practice that is wanting? The big question is this: Does transitional justice have a future, given its mixed record? This piece focuses on the meaning of the concept, how its application has evolved and whether it is sustainable as theory and praxis. How defined is the concept of transitional justice? What exactly does it entail and what does it seek to achieve? Are political democracy, the rule of law and human rights – the pivots of liberalism – the desired end results implicit in transitional justice approaches? If so, why should liberalism be the germ of the new post-conflict society? If transitional justice promotes liberalism, who gains and who loses if it succeeds? How would liberalism address deeply rooted cultural, colonial and ethnic rivalries and inequities? Would structures of deep inequity be vanquished by these norms? Or does this conception of transitional justice exacerbate conflicts as it seeks to transform societies? Who pays for transformation? What about market forces and norms – do they fuel or contain conflict? If existing transitional justice concepts are inadequate to recover, or reclaim, societies sickened by violence and repression, are there alternatives? If so, how do those alternatives compare with present conceptualizations of transitional justice? Should the term ‘transitional justice’ itself be abandoned?

Sierra Leone established two post-conflict institutions to address the crimes committed during its decade long civil war which officially ended in 2002. The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was established to promote justice by trying “persons who bear the greatest responsibility” (Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 2002, Article 1) for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law, while the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC) was mandated to offer a forum for victims and perpetrators alike to tell their wartime stories in an effort to promote reconciliation. How were women's expectations for justice and reconciliation met through the two transitional justice mechanisms? Although both institutions made notable attempts to include gender-specific crimes as an important component of their work, the all-important third ingredient in the “toolkit” of transitional justice – reparations and reforms – remained underutilized, and would have had a more positive impact on women's lives than the two institutions. This chapter highlights some of the achievements of the Court and Truth Commission, which were arguably superior to earlier transitional justice institutions, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) in addressing women's needs, but concludes that unless social, political, and economic improvements are made that empower women, women will remain vulnerable to sexual and other human rights abuses not only in times of war but in peace time as well.

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).

While transitional justice endeavors aim to help countries come to terms with violent pasts, policymakers and practitioners often claim that transitional justice mechanisms help prevent future violence as well. No cross-national research has tested this claim, however. This article begins to fill this gap by examining whether one of the most frequently used mechanisms of transitional justice, the truth commission, is associated with the onset of targeted mass killings (TMKs) in 27 countries between 1972 and 2018. Our differences-in-differences estimation approach finds that countries that have implemented truth commissions see a significant reduction in the recurrence of TMKs compared to those countries that did not implement a truth commission. Additional analyses reveal that while issuance of a final report and recommendations for reforms are not associated with the onset of TMKs, truth commissions that do not recommend the punishment of perpetrators are more likely to reduce TMKs in the years following the truth commission. The article ends by discussing the functions of truth commissions and proposing how their preventive capacity may be strengthened further through the application of an atrocity prevention lens.

This work aims to map and analyze the trajectory from impunity to accountability in El Salvador and it is divided into three parts. The first section comprises a brief description of the historical background from the Peace Agreements in the country to the transitional moment. In the next sections, the document explores the establishment of initial TJMs and their implementation, and subsequent movement along the impunity-accountability spectrum, to finish with the conclusions The study explicitly addresses a few central questions according to (1) contextual factors, (2) the transitional justice mechanisms (truth commissions, trials/ amnesty laws and reparation programs) that we are looking at, and (3) implementation (and obstacles) of TJMs.