This article explores the role of the International Criminal Court within transitional justice and its potential to contribute to reconciliation in Africa. While the ICC is often perceived as a purely prosecutorial body, this analysis argues for a broader interpretation of its mandate, aligning it with the core pillars of TJ: prosecutions, truth-telling, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence. Drawing on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a benchmark, the article proposes that the ICC, though lacking an amnesty mechanism, can fulfill similar reconciliatory functions through plea bargaining. The analysis further identifies legitimacy deficits undermining reconciliation efforts in the African context, stemming from issues such as cultural disconnect, selective prosecutions, and a rigid understanding of complementarity. The article concludes that reconciliation is attainable if the ICC embraces a holistic, culturally sensitive approach and forges stronger cooperation with domestic and regional actors like the African Union. Received: 14 May 2025; Accepted: 26 November 2025

Este artículo analiza críticamente la justicia transicional en Irlanda del Norte tras The Troubles, valorando su impacto en la reconciliación. Aunque el Acuerdo de Viernes Santo (1998) marcó un hito, la aplicación de las medidas transicionales ha sido fragmentada y politizada. Se examinan los cuatro pilares de la justicia transicional —verdad, justicia, reparación y garantías de no repetición—, destacando avances como la reforma policial y reconocimientos institucionales, pero también persistentes desafíos: la impunidad, las memorias divididas y la Ley de Amnistía de 2023. Se concluye que, pese a su contribución a la paz institucional, la justicia transicional no ha logrado una reconciliación social profunda. Se proponen medidas para fortalecer la verdad, la memoria colectiva y el diálogo intercomunitario como claves para una reconciliación genuina. Recibido: 15 mayo 2025; Aceptado: 21 noviembre 2025

This contribution addresses the core elements when approaching post violent contexts in which societies confront the legacies of gross and systematic human rights violations. Starting from the theoretical framework of transitional justice and focusing on the relationship between the four pillars of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-repetition, highlights the central role that victims must play in both Transitional Justice and reconciliation initiatives, an aspiration that is often proclaimed but unevenly realized.

Reconciliation in a transition requires interconnected events and processes to enable peaceful coexistence and restore trust in State institutions after a period of systematic violations to human rights. It involves articulating different transitional justice mechanisms. Prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence must be implemented comprehensively, ensuring victims’ families feel repaired. The absence of this balance hinders reconciliation. This research explores the participation of victims and their relatives in proceedings before the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) and the implementation of reparations as mechanisms for reconciliation. The study argues that victims’ relatives and survivors’ input in legal proceedings and horizontal relationships with legal representation foster agency and dignity, enabling reconciliation. Whereas full engagement in the IAHRS process promotes an inclusive legal environment, failure to implement Court-mandated reparations obstructs reconciliation with State institutions and the idea of justice itself, causing disillusionment. Received: 15 May 2025; Accepted: 19 November 2025

The book provides a rigorous multi-disciplinary analysis of the ingrained tensions between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the African Union (AU) related to a crisis of legitimacy of the ICC in the continent. According to the author, these tensions threaten the foundational principles of an international criminal justice system and have the potential of undermining impunity at a global level. Roestenburg-Morgan aims at identifying the factors that contribute to the erosion of legitimacy and explores three critical legitimacy deficits: institutional legitimacy, jurisdictional legitimacy and cultural legitimacy. To do so, this comprehensive work combines a mix of insights from political sciences, research methods from the legal domain as well as social sciences techniques (such as grounded theory guided by participant observation and unstructured interviews). The ample data collected on core categories and from diverse angles related to legitimacy for both the ICC and the AU, allows the author to advance solid solutions on how this legitimacy crisis could be redressed in order to reconcile the two institutions.

Feminism has confronted impunity for human rights violations in conflict situations by developing different legal, political and social strategies that have successfully enriched the debates and practice of transitional justice. At the same time, significant criticism has arisen within feminism regarding the ability of these strategies to transform structural gender inequalities. This paper focuses on the main issues and strategies feminism has proposed in the field of transitional justice and explore considerations about their transformative capacity. Received: 07 June 2025; Accepted: 02 December 2025

Desde el retorno a la democracia en Chile las políticas de justicia transicional han abordado las consecuencias de las violaciones a los derechos humanos ocurridas durante la dictadura civil militar (1973-1990). Estas políticas han buscado, además de reparar el daño causado, contribuir a la paz social después de la violencia estatal en dictadura. Parte fundamental de estas han sido la búsqueda de los desaparecidos, la cual el actual gobierno ha abordado a través del Plan Nacional de Búsqueda. Este artículo responde a la pregunta si estas políticas han logrado o no la reconciliación. Argumentamos que solo parcialmente, pues si bien se ha avanzado (políticas de reparación), las demandas de los familiares siguen pendientes (justicia) y aún no existe una condena política transversal a la violación de los derechos humanos, ni un acuerdo social sobre el irrestricto apoyo a estos en democracia. Recibido: 13 mayo 2025; Aceptado: 21 noviembre 2025

El presente artículo analiza el uso político que los gobiernos de la alternancia en México han dado a los organismos dedicados a investigar los delitos cometidos por el Estado y otros agentes durante la guerra sucia y la guerra contra el narco. Así, se plantea que, más que dilucidar los hechos, procurar justicia o reparar los daños infligidos a la población, la creación de dichos entes respondió al interés de las nuevas élites por congraciarse con sus votantes. Por ello, más que en su funcionamiento, este trabajo pretende explicar cómo y por qué la labor de estos órganos se vio obstaculizada por las mismas autoridades que los instituyeron. Recibido: 30 mayo 2025; Aceptado: 26 noviembre 2025

This paper makes a critical reflection on the transitional justice strategies implemented in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the so-called First Congo War to the present. Specifically, this work calls into question the preventive approach that is predicted to establish transitional justice mechanisms in the country. Thus, it identifies successes and errors in the functioning of the so-called transitional justice mechanisms to put an end to sexual violence, considered endemic in the country and which has intensified in the current armed conflict that is being waged in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between the M23 armed group - with the support of the Rwandan armed forces - and the Congolese army. Received: 15 May 2025; Accepted: 01 December 2025

Transitional justice processes have paid scant attention to colonial injustices. Among the latter, crimes against the cultural heritage of colonized nations have gone particularly overlooked. The argument of former colonial powers is that although morally appalling, colonialism was not illegal according to the standards of the time. By challenging this argument, this article critically investigates the relation between international law and colonial injustices to suggest ways to address the crimes of the past and provide legal guidance during transitional justice processes. It argues that to engage with colonial injustices, transitional justice should embrace a decolonized approach to Eurocentric international law and take into consideration alternative legal frameworks including both interpolity law and the legal resistance of the colonized nations. Received: 22 May 2025; Accepted: 05 December 2025