The Facade of Justice: Transitionless Transitional Justice of Ethiopia

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.

Abstract: This article extends recent academic debates about the sociohistorical entanglements between neoliberalism and human rights by exploring transitional justice processes in Sierra Leone, which followed the country's decade-long civil war (1991-2002). It analyses the ways both the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC) drew on 'economic' discourses, variously using the concepts of 'greed', 'corruption' and 'governance' to explain the broader context of the human rights violations with which they were concerned. By critically tracing how these discourses were mobilised, this article shows that neither the SLTRC nor the SCSL challenged the neoliberal vision of human rights. Rather, each process produced a narrative about Sierra Leone's civil war that not only effaced the deleterious role of neoliberal policies in the history of the conflict but also reproduced neoliberal ideas both about conflict and the economy. In this respect, my exploration of the Sierra Leone case demonstrates the importance of paying closer attention to how 'the socioeconomic' is conceptualised and accounted for within transitional justice and broader human rights processes, especially if they are to pose a more adequate challenge to the neoliberal order. Shorter abstract: This article extends recent academic debates about the sociohistorical entanglements between neoliberalism and human rights by exploring transitional justice processes in Sierra Leone after the country's decade-long civil war. The article focuses on the ways both the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission drew on discourses of 'greed', 'corruption' and 'governance' to explain the broader socioeconomic context of the human rights violations they were concerned with. The article demonstrates these discourses did not challenge but instead reinforced neoliberal visions of human rights.

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.

ABSTRACTThis article critically examines how multifarious levels of division among victim constituencies have shaped legal and non-legal transitional justice responses to human rights violations. It submits that this division has caused such responses to operate in accordance with the notion of being a ‘victim of’ rather than that of simply being a victim of human rights abuse per se. Expanding from this position, it proffers the theoretical viewpoint that transitional justice responses are premised on the nuanced typologies of being a victim of a particular perpetrator or being a victim of a particular harm or being a victim of particular circumstances. When determining which victims to offer redress to, which victimisers to punish and which harms to repair, these approaches have by necessity fallen back on hierarchies that favour certain victims and harms above others. This process of hierarchisation is multi-layered and involves interplay between ideological, gendered and class-based factors that place certain victims outside the reach of transitional justice discourses and processes. The exclusion of these victims, the article argues, creates an invisibilised category of victims of the peace that fail to benefit from transitional justice processes that struggle to deal with the complexity their situations present.

One of the most significant contemporary international human rights developments is the pursuit of what has become known as transitional justice.1 Transitional justice is a catchall term that refers to a variety of measures enacted in the context of political transitions that are designed to provide justice for gross human rights violations.2 Ideally, there is no need for naming and shaming in these contexts. Rather, individual suspects are arrested and, if found guilty, punished for their abuses. However, in the context of fragile political transitions, this is often not feasible. Although it may be morally and legally appropriate to punish perpetrators of human rights abuses and attend to the needs of victims, the continued power or usefulness of perpetrators and the pervasiveness of violence may make it impossible to prosecute those responsible or to adequately repair victims. Perpetrators may remain powerful and able to disrupt nascent peace processes or democratization efforts. Domestic courts may lack the capacity to conduct trials, or may be themselves complicit in abuses. In these contexts, other forms of transitional justice might be established in order to achieve some form of accountability.KeywordsInternational Criminal CourtTransitional JusticeUniversal JurisdictionTruth CommissionInternational CourtThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The Nuremberg tribunal was the expression and the beginning of states' recognition of their duty to prosecute genocide and other gross human rights violations. It was a first step towards fulfillin...

Through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Interim Constitution of 2007, Nepal has vowed to address the conflict-era human rights violations including through adopting a credible transitional justice processes. However, the national commitments towards ensuring accountability for past human rights violations and ensuring non-repetition of such violations in future are yet to be fulfilled. In this context, the judicial activism appears to have been a silver lining in terms of taking forward the transitional justice issues. In this backdrop, this chapter aims to analyse the decisions of Supreme Court of Nepal pertaining to promoting accountability for the past human rights violations and to examine the strengths and weaknesses of judicial response in the light of victims’ right to effective remedy guaranteed under the international human rights treaties and jurisprudence. This chapter finally provides a set of suggestions towards strengthening the transitional justice process in Nepal.

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.

Human rights violations and violent conflicts in the Niger Delta of Nigeria have elicited interest from scholars and international agencies. Although studies provide significant insights into the conflicts in the Niger Delta, the issue of transitional justice has not been adequately considered. This article examines human rights violations and transitional justice in the Niger Delta. It begins with the conceptualization of human rights violations and transitional justice. It then offers a historical contextualization of oil production in Nigeria and an overview of the human rights situation in the Niger Delta. The key argument of the article is that efforts to ensure peace in the Niger Delta have not been associated with an effective transitional justice system. Since transitional justice is a requirement for sustainable peace after periods of gross human rights violations and violent conflict, efforts should be made to put transitional justice mechanisms in place to punish perpetrators of human rights violations and provide redress for victims.

Within the study and practice of transitional justice, the roles played by the arts in addressing past human rights violations have become increasingly well accepted. This article examines the role of the arts in Cambodia’s transitional justice process, from the initial coupling of attempts to revive the arts with the pursuit of human rights in the early 1980s to the reparations orders provided by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). It identifies five main contributions the arts may make to transitional justice processes—evidence, complementary justice, outreach, activism, and critique—and demonstrates not only that various art forms have assumed each of these roles in Cambodia but also that this case extends the place of the arts in transitional justice. In particular, by highlighting the role played by local activists in seeking to revive the arts in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge period, this article reveals the significance of arts initiatives, instigated in the absence of a formal justice process, for formal processes once they eventually emerge. In doing so, it argues that without the arts initiatives and activism that preceded it, the formal inclusion of the arts in the ECCC process would not have been possible.

Transitional justice processes and mechanisms are undertaken to examine, interrogate, and respond to the legacies of massive and serious human right abuses (International Center for Transitional Justice [ICTJ], 2022), with the aim of societal transformation and reconciliation, particularly as this relates to racial and colonial violence (OHCHR, 2022). Globally, gender and sexual minorities are some of the most oppressed groups, enduring significant and overwhelming human rights violations under colonising regimes (Ashe, 2019), yet have been predominantly excluded from these processes. In the past thirty years, there have been more than thirty-five truth commissions in different countries with a past of conflict and violence (Fobear, 2014), yet almost all have failed to embrace the participation and testimony of the LGBTIQA+ community. In Australia, states and territories are progressing truth and justice processes as fundamental mechanisms supporting treaties between these jurisdictions and First Nations Peoples. Colonisation, from first contact to current day, has embedded and enforced strict social constructs of gender and sexuality. Indigenous LGBTIQA+ people have experienced significant historical and continual harms specifically targeting non-compliant genders and/or sexualities. The inclusion of Indigenous LGBTQIA+ communities in Australian truth-telling and transitional justice processes, including the guaranteeing of robust Indigenous LGBTIQA+ voice and testimony, is critical to ensure that truth-telling is accurate and comprehensive. As psychosocial risks are associated with individuals and communities being involved in these processes, Indigenous LGBTIQA+ cultural safety, health, social and emotional wellbeing supports, must be prioritised. This paper proposes direct guidelines and actions for supporting Indigenous LGBTQIA+ safety and wellbeing in truth and justice processes.

Transitional justice is an attempt to rise and advance from periods of state-led abuses towards instituting the supremacy of law. Tunisia has a marked history of gross human rights violations. To investigate and proffer solutions to these violations, the country’s Transitional Justice Law, which gave birth to the momentous Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD), was passed in. The Commission was an exceptional transitional justice inaugurated to investigate and expose the truth about gross human rights violations committed from 1955 to 2013. With a focus on the victims of torture, this research examines the extent of the implementation of the TARR model of transitional justice by the Commission. Results revealed that the Commission has succeeded to a considerable extent in revealing the truth about the violations victims of torture have endured. The study, therefore, recommends the demonstration of a stronger political will by the upcoming government for ultimate success.

ABSTRACTEducation is acknowledged as a component of transitional justice processes, yet details about how to implement education reform in postconflict societies are underexplored and politicized [King, Elisabeth. 2014. From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda. New York: Cambridge University Press]. Local and international actors often neglect the complicated nature of education reform in postconflict societies undergoing transitional justice processes [Jones, Briony. 2015. "Educating Citizens in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Experiences and Contradictions in Post-war Education Reform." In Transitional Justice and Reconciliation: Lessons from the Balkans, edited by Martina Fischer, and Olivera Simic, 193–208. New York: Routledge. Transitional Justice]. The role of the diaspora in transitional justice has been increasingly explored as a participatory transnational actor with influence and knowledge about local dynamics [Roht-Arriaza, Naomi. 2006. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; Haider, Huma. 2008. “(Re)Imagining Coexistence: Striving for Sustainable Return, Reintegration and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ”International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (1): 91–113; Young, Laura, and Rosalyn Park. 2009.“ Engaging Diasporas in Truth Commissions: Lessons from the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission Diaspora Project.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (3): 341–361; Koinova, Maria, and Dženeta Karabegović. 2017.“ Diasporas and Transitional Justice: Transnational Activism from Local to Global Levels of Engagement.” Global Networks 17 (2): 212–233]. This article bridges academic literature about diaspora engagement and transitional justice, and education and transitional justice by incorporating the role of diaspora actors in post-conflict processes. Using empirical data from multi-sited field work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France, it examines diaspora initiatives which aim to influence local transitional justice processes through translocal community involvement in education and youth policy. It argues that diaspora initiatives can provide alternative and intermediate solutions to the status quo in their homeland, with some potential for contributing to transitional justice and reconciliation processes. Ultimately, diaspora initiatives need support from homeland institutions in order to forward transitional justice agendas in post-conflict societies.

This paper focuses on the work and experience of the United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in promoting and assisting truth-seeking and reconciliation processes from a human rights perspective, in the context of transitional justice processes. It maps the normative and operational framework to engage in such processes from a human rights perspective, describes the development of an internationally recognized right to the truth for victims of gross violations of human rights, and presents examples of participation and truth-seeking mechanisms for the realization of the right to the truth, namely national consultations and truth commissions. Finally, it addresses the issue of how human-rights-based truth and reconciliation processes can complement justice processes and result in improvements in access to justice for Indigenous Peoples. Since 2002, OHCHR has promoted, supported and assisted truth and reconciliation processes in conflict and post-conflict contexts, as part of transitional justice processes. For OHCHR and the UN generally, the notion of transitional justice is concerned with how societies emerging from conflict or from repressive rule address the legacy of past violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. In this context, transitional justice mechanisms should be understood

Between 2009 and 2011, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum began a daring project on transitional justice. Practically and conceptually, undertaking work on transitional justice in Zimbabwe, particularly in the rural areas, was an exercise of brave hearts at a time when the state did not tolerate any institution that would brook the idea. Transitional justice was a new concept in a country used to widespread rights abuses, and the government did not want to hear about a transitional justice process as it could excite or incite people to demand accountability for everything, including gross human rights violations. Taking Transitional Justice to the People was a flagship outreach programme that sowed the seeds of the current narrative for dealing with the past in Zimbabwe. The Forum had more sceptics in civil society than friends, as very few understood transitional justice or believed it to be a viable option for the Zimbabwean situation. Technically, transitional justice as a practice, process and norm had no local presence. It was viewed as foreign, an imposition from Western countries with the mischievous idea of changing the regime. Yet the citizens wanted the idea, even with little understanding of what was in it for them. A review of the Forum’s outreach programme assists in unravelling the transitional justice practitioner’s paradox in a country that appears not to be undergoing any form of transition.