‘Victims of’ human rights abuses in transitional justice: hierarchies, perpetrators and the struggle for peace

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.

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.

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.

The Ethiopian government has committed to a transitional justice process to address gross human rights violations through investigation, prosecution, truth-finding and revelation, reconciliation, conditional amnesty, reparation, and institutional reforms. Despite these efforts and international support, this mechanism will unlikely resolve Ethiopia's political and security issues. The government's lack of intent to cease ongoing conflicts and its continued human rights violations hinder effective participation in implementing the transitional justice process. Furthermore, the involvement of non-state and foreign actors, which are beyond the state’s authority, in gross human rights violations undermines accountability. Victims and witnesses in conflict zones face significant barriers to participation due to the government's limited reach and fear of retribution. Gross human rights violations by the government and the Ethiopian National Defense Force raise doubts about the accountability of civil and military leaders through a government-controlled transitional justice mechanism. To address these challenges, the current government should relinquish power to a transitional government to mitigate undue influence on the justice process, cease hostilities, and hold officials accountable. If the government resists establishing a transitional government, a hybrid court with foreign judges and prosecutors should handle high-profile cases, while domestic courts, with strict measures to ensure impartiality and independence, should address other cases.

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.

This article reflects upon the ways in which transitional justice debates and processes impacted Tunisia's transition. It explores key questions such as what demands for justice emerged in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution? Did Tunisia's transitional justice process reflect these demands? And, did international norms of transitional justice, which emerged from a field of practice that draws heavily upon European, Latin America and Sub‐Saharan experiences, but has largely excluded the Arab Middle East, serve to mediate between competing demands for justice in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution? It will be argued that transitional justice demands in Tunisia reflected a breakdown in the state–society socioeconomic bargain, which had maintained autocratic regimes since independence in 1956; however, due to the elite‐centred nature of transitional justice discourses, many transitional justice demands never resonated into mainstream transitional justice discourse. We will argue that international transitional justice entrepreneurs' attempt to import a normative framework that was ill suited to grapple with the complex legacies of socioeconomic marginalization, resulted in a growing disillusionment and disengagement from the state driven transitional justice process on the part of Tunisian society.

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.

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.

The concept and study of transitional justice has grown exponentially over the last decades. Since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after the end of the Second World War, there have been a number of attempts made across the globe to achieve justice for human rights violations (International Peace Institute 2013: 10). How these attempts at achieving justice impact whether or not societies reconcile, continues to be one of the key discussions taking place in a transitional justice discourse. One particular context where this debate continues to rage on is in Bosnia and Herzegovina, many scholars argue that the transitional justice process and mechanism employed in Bosnia and Herzegovina have not fostered inter-group reconciliation, but in fact caused more divisions. To this end, this article explores the context of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina from a unique perspective that focuses on the need for reconciliation and healing after transitional justice processes like war crime prosecutions. This article explores why the prosecuting of war criminals has not fostered reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and how the processes have divided Bosnian society further. Additionally, this article presents the idea of state-sponsored dialog sessions as a way of dealing with the past and moving beyond the divisions of retributive justice.

The economic and social dimension of transitional justice has been largely ignored in favour of traditional emphasis on violations of civil and political rights. While early transitional justice processes mainly focused on criminal prosecutions for bodily integrity violations, socioeconomic issues, including economica and social rights (herein ESRs) violations, were seen just as part of background. However, scholarship and practitioners are increasingly calling to include ESRs violations in transitional justice processes. Indeed, economic and social conditions are frequently linked to human rights abuses, often constituting a cause, means or consequence of conflict and authoritarianism. Including the assessment of ESRs violations as an issue for transitional justice might serve the purpose of establishing a more comprehensive understanding of the root causes of past human rights violations as well as to facilitate the pathway to achieve a sustainable peace.

Highlighting the place and role of women in transitional justice processes draws attention to two main aspects: the need for a holistic approach to transitional justice processes, and paying attention to the sensitive nature of gender-based violence in the whole cycle of truth commissions from articulation of the mandate of the commission, composition of the commissioners, categorisation of crimes, to the writing and implementation of the final report. A feminist advocacy approach to transitional justice is framed under a critical feminist strategy that draws attention to diverse forms of human rights violations against women in situations of conflict; structures of exclusion of women�s concerns; the agency and presence of women in truth commission processes. Hence, discourse on gendering transitional justice processes has recently emerged, especially given that women have been targeted in conflict situations, giving rise to sexual and gender-based violence, and indiscriminate killing of women despite their non-combatant role. This article discusses the extent of marginalisation of cases of women�s gross human rights violations in truth commission processes, while acknowledging positive attempts made so far, through critical feminism, to include women�s concerns in these processes.

The article examines the EU’s policy framework, programs and tools on support to transitional justice, and evaluates their impact and challenges. Transitional justice refers to the various ways of addressing the past human rights violations and serious crimes that occurred in contexts of political transition, such as post-conflict or post-authoritarian situations. The EU has adopted a comprehensive policy framework on support to transitional justice in 2015, which defines its principles, objectives, and modalities of engagement with partner countries and international and regional organisations on transitional justice issues. The EU has also used various instruments and actions to support transitional justice initiatives worldwide, such as providing financial assistance, engaging in political dialogue, offering technical expertise, and advocating for transitional justice norms and standards. The article also illustrates how the EU has supported transitional justice processes in different contexts and regions, such as dealing with the legacy of World War II, the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the war in the former Yugoslavia, and the Arab Spring. The article concludes by identifying some of the achievements and shortcomings of the EU’s involvement in transitional justice processes, such as contributing to accountability, recognition, trust, reconciliation, and non-recurrence; but also facing inconsistency, selectivity, conditionality, interference, cooptation, politicisation, fragmentation, duplication, etc. The article also suggests some ways to improve the EU’s policy framework, programs and tools on support to transitional justice, such as enhancing consistency, coherence, coordination, complementarity, and adaptability. The article also explores how the EU’s role and approaches in the field of transitional justice can affect its own identity and credibility as a global actor that promotes human rights, democracy, and the rule of law as core values of its external action.

In post-war Sierra Leone, a range of transitional justice mechanisms were implemented to address experiences of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. Much of the research on local transitional justice processes has focused on the work of organisations, failing to acknowledge how individual and communal dynamics shape and are shaped by these programs. Drawing on original fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Laura S. Martin moves beyond discussions measuring effectiveness and considers how people navigate their circumstances in conflict and post-conflict societies. Developing the idea of recognised and unrecognised transitional justice processes, Martin uses Fambul Tok as an example of a recognised local transitional justice program and shows how ordinary Sierra Leoneans appropriated Fambul Tok's agenda for their own purposes. Ultimately, this book highlights the crucial role of agency and the diverse range of actors involved in transitional justice processes. Justice, as Martin powerfully argues, is not something that happens to or for people, but is enacted by individuals and communities.

The determination of truth in the aftermath of war aiming at establishing justice and peace is a key element of a transitional justice (TJ) process. The theory of justice of Roland Dworkin deals with an approach in which the interpretation of values such as equality, liberty or truth are paramount. Dworkin’s theory of justice is applied to constitutional states and lays out how democratic values are negotiated. The goal of a TJ process is to lead a state towards democracy after a war or internal armed conflict. TJ processes as well as Dworkin’s theory of justice are to be understood as dynamic, which implies that they are subject to constant change and thus to be considered in their respective social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. This paper explores the relationship between truth and justice in the framework of a TJ trial and Roland Dworkin’s theory of justice. The TJ process in Colombia serves as a case study because that was where I conducted field research in TJ in 2019.

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.