Youth and Transitional Justice

Abstract

Youth are frequently among the primary foot-soldiers in conflict, the victims of violence and the instigators of efforts to advance justice and transformative structural change – whether as former child soldiers, recruits into armed groups, targets of security force abuses or through voluntary participation in protests and dissent that often provoke violent repression. While young people are consequently among the primary objects of transitional justice endeavours, they have nonetheless been strikingly absent from the practice, policy and scholarship of the transitional justice field. This means they have been effectively marginalized in the generation, design, implementation and evaluation of transitional justice programmes and approaches during conflict or in transitions from autocracy to democracy.1 The concern here is not merely about the role or exclusion of youth as a focal point in these transitional justice processes, but the resultant loss of the unique contributions offered through the meaningful participation, creativity and...