Abstract
This paper contributes to the literature that analyses application of restorative justice in transitional societies. It examines recent attempts to employ restorative justice in the Basque peace process following ETA’s ceasefire. Using the Basque experience, it discusses some of the hidden dangers and tensions which arise when attempts are made to utilize ‘traditional’ restorative justice approaches and assumptions underlying them in transitional settings. One of the initiatives under discussion used a well-established restorative justice method of mediation between individual victims and offenders and attempted to transplant it without alteration from the context of ‘ordinary’ crime to the context of ‘political’ crime. It is argued that the scale and complexity of the conflict that looms behind individual offences in question renders certain assumptions and practices of ‘traditional’ restorative justice questionable both ethically and politically. Several other initiatives that have emerged recently in the Basque peace process are discussed which do not take the ‘classic’ form of restorative justice, yet values underpinning them fit well with the restorative justice philosophy. They might suggest a more promising direction for the development of restorative justice in the aftermath of mass violence.
Highlights
In recent decades the focus and scope of the restorative justice movement has expanded
Examples of restorative justice initiatives in transitional contexts range from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Boraine, 2000; du Toit, 2000; Llewellyn, 2007; Tutu, 1999; Villa-Vicencio, 1998) to gacaca courts in Rwanda (Clark, 2010; Drumbl, 2000) to community-based restorative justice programmes in Northern Ireland (Ellison & Shirlow, 2008; Eriksson, 2008; McEvoy & Eriksson, 2006; McEvoy & Mika, 2001, 2002; Mika & McEvoy, 2001; Shirlow & McEvoy, 2008) to a variety of reparative and truth-seeking measures that have been used around the globe in the aftermath of mass atrocities (Aertsen, Arsovska, Rohne, Valiñas & Vanspauwen, 2012; Govier, 2006; Hayner 2011; Minow, 1998; Quinn, 2009)
Proponents observe a conceptual overlap between restorative justice and transitional justice (that is, the conception of justice intervening in periods of political change and aspiring to provide some kinds of justice or repair, or both, in the aftermath of widespread violence and large-scale past abuses (BuckleyZistel, Beck, Brown & Mieth, 2015; Roht-Arriaza & Mariezcurrena, 2006; Teitel, 2000, 2015))
Summary
In recent decades the focus and scope of the restorative justice movement has expanded. Today an increasing number of its advocates embrace a transformative conception of restorative justice which goes beyond ‘private’ dimensions of crime and seeks to apply restorative ideas to the societal level so as to correct social conditions and situations that have caused suffering and injustices (Llewellyn and Philpott, 2014; Sullivan and Tifft, 2006, section V). One strand in this growing body of literature describes and analyses application of restorative justice in the context of transitional societies, or societies moving either from mass violence to peace or from repressive regimes to democracy. Values underpinning restorative justice may facilitate projects of political reconciliation by calling upon wrongdoers to acknowledge pain and injustice they have caused, offering recognition of victim suffering, providing opportunities for democratic participation, truth-finding, norm-clarification and starting the process of building bridges between deeply divided sectors of society
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