The Projectification of Reparation

Abstract

AbstractThere has been increasing use of project-based organization in various areas of human rights practice, including within truth and justice-seeking in the wake of mass atrocities. This article traces the development and deployment of project-based approaches to judicial reparation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), an internationalized (hybrid) criminal tribunal. Drawing on the authors’ many years of close observation in and around the ECCC, it describes and explains how a project-based approach responded to the challenge of ‘moral and collective’ reparation for victims of mass crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979). The article critically examines how development actors nominated, designed and ‘delivered’ so-called ‘reparation projects’. Twenty-four projects were ultimately recognized by the ECCC; key details of these are succinctly tabulated here for the benefit of readers. The article discusses the effects of the projectification of ECCC reparation, including new practices, changed relationships and changed meanings of reparation. It finds that in Cambodia—a state that has experienced decades of international development assistance resulting in the entrenchment of project forms across different fields—the mobilization of new actors and resources has expanded the possibilities for ECCC reparation and provided some benefits to those victims involved. However, a project-based approach also reshaped decision-making and accountability structures underpinning reparation work. The article argues that using ‘projectification’ as an analytical lens expands our capacity to understand how, and with what consequences, global notions of reparation and justice are enacted in different contexts through the coordination and implementation of projects.