What Is the Future of Transitional Justice?

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The term ‘transitional justice’ evokes hope and renaissance. For more than a quartercentury, when the concept of transitional justice was first mooted, postconflict and other tormented societies have attempted to embrace it as a bridge to a more hopeful future. A number of states in the depths of despair and countries wracked by seemingly endless cycles of violence see transitional justice tools as a possible midwife of a democratic, rule-of-law state. In many circles, transitional justice has become an article of faith as a catalyst for reclaiming societies in political and social imbalance and dysfunction. Senior statesmen and leading academics have endorsed the critical place of transitional justice in returning societies to civilization. Diverse regions of the globe – from Europe and Central and Latin America to Africa and Asia – have latched on to the glimmer of hope offered by transitional justice ideas, processes and institutions. Almost three decades later, the body of evidence suggests a mixed record. There have many successes of transitional justice initiatives, but there have also been many challenges. This special issue of IJTJ seeks to excavate these hopes and fears of a relatively novel idea. It has sought out new and divergent voices, many with a critical lens, to ask nagging questions about the enterprise of transitional justice. The emergence of transitional justice roughly coincided with the end of the Cold War and the euphoria of the presumed triumph of free market ideologies and political liberation around the globe. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, one-party regimes and opaque dictatorships – most supported by either the West or the East – gave way to new experiments in democratic rule. Most were emerging from long nights of tyranny and despotism. Such global upheaval and regime change had not been witnessed since the era of decolonization. In Latin America, brutal military kleptocracies were in retreat, and in Africa military fascism and single-party states were put on their back foot by pro-democracy activists and human rights advocates. The close of the last century and the beginning of this one were marked by hope and the promise