Non-recurrence, reconciliation, and transitional justice: situating accountability in Northern Ireland's oral history archive

Abstract

Guarantees of non-recurrence remain a complex component of transitional justice. Tasked with ensuring that past traumas are not re-enacted, post-conflict states typically focus on dismantling security forces or paramilitary sectors that participated in conflict violence. This fulfils the state’s judicial responsibilities by condemning what is often the most visible sign of conflict: large-scale violence and human rights abuses. Other organisational entities are also capable of facilitating movements toward preventing the reoccurrence of armed conflict. In this regard, archives are uniquely positioned to engage with aspects of non-recurrence mechanisms and have the potential to encourage bottom-up community engagement while broadening the scope of transitional justice work. Using Northern Ireland’s proposed Oral History Archive (OHA) as a case study, this paper first untangles the intricacies of non-recurrence as an enigmatic aspect of transitional justice and reconciliation as a cornerstone of the OHA’s archival constructs. It then offers the concept of archival accountability as a better suited architecture for the OHA which could subsequently integrate community-based practices into this particular transitional justice setting.