Plunder and Pain: Should Transitional Justice Engage with Corruption and Economic Crimes?

Abstract

This article examines the various points at which accountability for economic crimes, including large-scale corruption, intersects with accountability for human rights violations. To date, transitional justice has largely compartmentalized legacies of abuse into those based on a narrow set of human rights violations and those based on economic crimes, which the author argues is an inadequate way to address both sets of abuses. Because corruption and human rights violations are mutually reinforcing forms of abuse, the field of transitional justice should approach economic crimes in the same way it approaches civil and political rights violations. The author suggests that traditional transitional justice mechanisms would be strengthened by an engagement with corruption and economic crimes, which would allow for both sources of impunity to be confronted.