Museums and Transitional Justice: Assessing the Impact of a Memorial Museum on Young People in Post-Communist Romania

Scholarly work on transitional justice has typically focused on particular strategies to address past human rights abuses (e.g. truth commissions, memorialization, lustration), and only recently shifted toward more inclusive accounts. The book of political scientist Lavinia Stan, Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania: The Politics of Memory, contributes to this academic shift, synthetizing in a concise and coherent manner the complex processes of reckoning with the communist past in ...

The article constitutes an initial attempt to combine the insights provided by the disciplines of Transitional Justice (TJ) and human rights, and it originates from a concern with the current situation of human rights in Argentina. Although there have been significant improvements since democratization in the mid-1980s, conditions favouring human rights abuses still persist. In particular, specific human rights abuses (torture, disappearances, and murder) that resemble practices common during the repression under state terrorism (1976 to 1983) continue to take place. The article has four parts. First, it provides a brief literature review on TJ and investigates the relationship between TJ and human rights. Second, the article offers a concise theoretical background on the notion of impunity, considering its nature and sustaining mechanisms. Third, the case of Argentina is examined, looking at the years of military rule and the reforms undertaken since transition. Fourth, the persistence of continuities between past and present human rights abuses in Argentina is unpacked, by offering an empirical consideration of impunity and its consequences; the lack of successful police reform; and a social context that tolerates human rights violence. The combined lenses of TJ and human rights can be useful for practitioners to spot continuities in human rights violations and enable them to develop policies and strategies that better address the causes of human rights abuses.

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.

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.

Violations of law, human rights abuse, and socio-economic and political grievances are legacies of violence and conflict-affected politics. In recent times, the aggravation of violence and conflict has hindered political development and instigated socio-economic grievances. Transitional justice and peace deal with human rights abuses, violation of rights, violence, and other grievances in societies in transition. One of the main focuses of transitional justice discourse is to engage human rights law for political stability, accountability, and peace in changes, as developed in the strict law practice. This research is descriptive and relies on secondary data. Thus, transitional justice and the rule of law are considered a framework for analysis in violence and conflict-affected politics as intertwined to promote post-violence and conflict or socio-economic and political stability. Therefore, various political actors have engaged in promoting the rule of law and the promotion of peace through security sector reform. With the focus on transitional justice, various processes have been considered through the promotion of rule of law, security, and accountability in the Niger Delta and the northeast of Nigeria that have been ravaged by insurgency, terrorism, violence, and conflict, and these processes have been supported and developed by an increasing number of actors at the national and international levels. Therefore, this paper investigates the socio-economic and political legacies of violence and conflict in transitional justice and peace and examines the interaction of transitional justice and the values of the rule of law in dealing with political tensions as shown in the cases of Boko Haram and Niger Delta. This paper recommends that transitional justice and the rule of law contribute to peace and post-conflict recovery for socio-economic and political grievances resulting from violence and conflict.

This article argues that lenders providing financial assistance to authoritarian regimes should be held responsible for complicity if they knew or should have known that they would facilitate human rights abuses. Discussing the lenders’ role in a transitional justice context leads to a broadening of legal and institutional tools to channel this responsibility. This article starts by critically assessing the micro criteria traditionally used to understand the causal link between finance and human rights abuses, suggesting that a macro (i.e. holistic, interdisciplinary and casuistic) approach considering structures, processes and dynamics of sovereign financing should be applied when interpreting this link. It also explains how that traditional view is being challenged. A rational choice approach is taken to explain the most salient financial features of large-scale campaigns of gross human rights violations in order to understand the real relevance of funds in contexts of criminal regimes. The legal bases of responsibility for complicity are then discussed, separately presenting the arguments applied to private, multilateral and bilateral lenders. It also outlines how the missing financial link could be integrated into the domain of transitional justice, presenting, elaborating and assessing enforceability of concrete mechanisms to channel financial complicity in order to attain transitional goals. Finally, concluding remarks and challenges on the relationship between financial complicity and transitional justice are presented; and policy and economic considerations are made to better understand the real implications that incorporating the financial dimension into the transitional justice universe could have for a country.

Human rights abuses and corruption during authoritarian rule are rooted in the arbitrary and coercive use of power. This study examines how two post-authoritarian accountability issues intersected in the Philippines, South Korea, and Indonesia. In the Philippines and South Korea, human rights abuses and corruption were viewed as overlapping or related legacies of authoritarian rule. The activities to eliminate corruption worked as catalysts for milestones of transitional justice, and violations of socio-economic rights were acknowledged. In Indonesia, by contrast, corruption and human rights abuses were treated as special crimes that occur continually across time. Specialized agencies helped Indonesia deal with human rights abuses and corruption during the authoritarian era. This study shows that anti-corruption activities can work as a catalyst for the progress of transitional justice for human rights abuses. It also highlights that post-authoritarian practices to deal with economic violence existed in Asia before transitional justice took shape as a field.

The systematic study of human rights came into its own in the 1980s on the heels of expanded efforts by human rights organizations, the U.S. Congress, and the Carter administration to respond to human rights abuses. Latin America was a primary target of these efforts and many of the early studies on human rights focused on this region. Here, an early literature on human rights formed around the practical question of whether U.S. foreign aid allocations were steered away from human rights violators, as the law required. The literature brought some of the first attempts to measure human rights violations systematically, and several of these scholars moved on to broader questions about what caused human rights abuses and on global efforts to stop them. This included analyses of threat perceptions, human rights movements, foreign policy, naming and shaming, and transitional justice. Some of the key theories in this literature were developed, at least in part, by Latin Americanists and a lot of early empirical application of the theories focused on this region. Over time, this literature has become increasingly global, and thus earlier research on Latin America greatly influenced the broader literature on human rights. Alongside the evolution of the scholarly literature, the nature of human rights abuses in Latin America has also changed. After the widespread democratization of the region, abuses shifted from those primarily targeted at political opposition to actions targeted at socially marginalized individuals. This suggests an important new topic for researchers.

In 2020, the Maldives instituted a transitional justice process to address decades of systematic human rights abuses including the widespread use of arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and the forced depopulation of entire island communities. While the country’s decision to confront its violent past is not unusual, the institution it has established to undertake that task is. Rather than institute a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), refer cases to its Human Rights Commission, or undertake criminal trials in its domestic judicial system, the Maldives has taken the unprecedented step of establishing a temporary Ombudsperson’s Office for Transitional Justice (OTJ). Comparing the OTJ to national human rights institutions and TRCs, this article examines how and why the Maldives’ transitional justice process has taken this unusual form. It suggests that the OTJ represents a new attempt to address the full range of human rights abuses, including violations of social and economic rights, perpetrated by repressive regimes.

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.

Existing measures of human rights abuses are often only available at the country-year level. Several more fine-grained measures exhibit spatio-temporal inaccuracies or reporting biases due to the primary sources upon which they rely. To address these challenges, and to increase the diversity of available human rights measures more generally, this study provides the first quantitative effort to measure human rights abuses from textual records of citizen-government interactions. Using a dataset encompassing over 1.5 million access-to-information (ATI) requests made to the Mexican federal government from June 2003 onward, supervised classification is used to identify the subset of these requests that pertain to human rights abuses of various types. The results from this supervised machine learning exercise are validated against (i) gold standard ATI requests pertaining to past human rights abuses in Mexico and (ii) several accepted external measures of sub-national and sub-annual human rights abuses. In doing so, we demonstrate that the measurement of human rights abuses from citizen-submitted ATI request texts can provide measures of human rights abuse that exhibit both high validity and notable spatio-temporal specificity, relative to existent human rights datasets and variables.

Most post-conflict societies are defined by poverty, unemployment, social injustice and gender inequality, making them an ideal environment for trafficking in human beings (THB) to flourish. Against this backdrop, the necessity for transitional justice processes to address THB and its underlying causes has been recognised. Trafficking for sexual exploitation in particular has received global attention and has triggered heated debates, and while it has been met by significant policy reform at the global, regional and national levels such initiatives have often proven to have dangerous consequences for women’s rights. At the forefront of THB initiatives are the women who work in the sex industry. Using Cambodia and Myanmar as case studies, we demonstrate in this chapter how transitional justice mechanisms and processes can facilitate women’s empowerment by engaging better with counter-trafficking efforts. We call for the field of transitional justice to expand its mandate beyond formal mechanisms to encompass efforts that aim to achieve durable peace by addressing deep-rooted gender inequalities leading to widespread human rights abuses. Bringing THB within the transitional justice discourse can facilitate creating policy initiatives that do not occur at the expense of undermining the already fragile status and position of women in transitional societies.

The notion of human rights has rapidly evolved in the last century to become an important tool of protection in the face of oppression. But what happens if human rights are violated? How can a society address this and move forward? Transitional justice processes seek to address the human rights abuses of the past while simultaneously creating a culture of respect for human rights in the future. This chapter will provide a brief discussion of the theoretical foundations of the concepts of human rights and transitional justice, and the connections between them. It outlines the essential characteristics of human rights, and then the five key elements that form the core of the concept of transitional justice: truth, justice, reparations, memory, and guarantees of non-repetition.KeywordsHuman rightsTransitional justiceMemoryReparationTruthJusticeGuarantees of non-repetition