Field Of Transitional Justice Research Articles

Decolonization of Postcolonial Africa: A Structural Justice Project More Radical than Transitional Justice

ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to the debate as to whether the field of transitional justice can or should take on decolonization as one of its desired goals. I argue that efforts to incorporate decolonization within the normative and functional remit of the field are politically, practically and conceptually untenable. In addition to the high implausibility of the field undertaking self-radicalization within the existing (neo)liberal Euro-American order, transitional justice is based on principles of responsibility and accountability that are fundamentally different from decolonization construed as structural justice. In particular, whereas transitional justice is essentially an intervention to restore the integrity of the existing normative and social order, the decolonization project seeks to interrogate and dismantle some parts of the system being legitimated, if not the entire system. Therefore, framing such a project as transitional justice risks depoliticizing and minimizing its socially transformative essence which is long established in the history of political liberation movements of the postcolony. Although this is a case study of Sierra Leone’s almost 20-year experience of transitional justice, I aim to connect the field with the recent critical turn to the decolonization of postcolonial Africa.

Evolution of the Conception of Justice within the Field of Transitional Justice in Post-dictatorial Chilean Society

ABSTRACT∞ We have recently witnessed two political milestones in Chile: the social uprising of 18 October 2019 and, currently, the drafting of a new political constitution. In this context and based on data from interdisciplinary research on political and post-dictatorial culture, this article aims to present the conceptions of justice held by stakeholders in transitional justice efforts in Chile. The results reveal that the conception of justice has gone from being centred on retributive and, residually, restorative justice to focusing on social or distributive justice. We conclude that a new constitution that includes this expanded notion of justice – which has been observed in the last decade and crystallized in the demands manifested in the social uprising – would represent the completion of a lengthy political transition.

Youth and Transitional Justice

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...

How does transitional justice matter? Expanding and refining quantitative research on the effects of transitional justice policies

Although the field of transitional justice is expanding rapidly, research on its effects remains underdeveloped, despite its presumed importance for human rights and democratic consolidation. The field suffers from incompatible approaches and definitions, disputed causal models and conclusions, and a multiplicity of dependent variables. Quantitative work struggles to ground measurement and hypothesis testing in nuanced conceptions of transitional justice’s causal processes. Robust understanding of effects requires integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches while balancing accuracy with parsimony. This article first revisits and builds on a key quantitative work: Olsen et al.’s Transitional Justice in Balance (2010). Using an expanded dataset to repeat their descriptive and statistical analysis of the effects of transitional justice, the article finds results only marginally consistent with their original findings. This reassessment is the basis for proposed revisions to their causal model, conceptualization, measurement, and hypothesis testing. The proposed approach includes a two-step causal model, differentiated measurement of transitional justice mechanisms, and hypotheses that are more deeply grounded in the insights of qualitative studies. These revisions provide a framework with rich potential for comparative quantitative analysis of the effects of transitional justice.

Knowledge for Peace: Transitional Justice and the Politics of Knowledge in Theory and Practice ed. by Briony Jones and Ulrike Lühe

Reviewed by: Knowledge for Peace: Transitional Justice and the Politics of Knowledge in Theory and Practice ed. by Briony Jones and Ulrike Lühe Claire Wright (bio) Knowledge for Peace: Transitional Justice and the Politics of Knowledge in Theory and Practice (Edward Elgar Press, Briony Jones & Ulrike Lühe eds., 2021). ISBN 978 1 78990 534 2 (ebook, Open Access), 288 pages. As a social scientist working within a broadly qualitative paradigm, I acknowledge that the politics of knowledge and my own positionality have shaped my work and experience. I have carried out in-country and on-line fieldwork in Latin America for the past fifteen years and, during this time, I have been faced with very real dilemmas of my relationship with the “field,” (or, in more human terms, the individuals and societies that I am studying). Such dilemmas include issues of negotiating consent, ownership of voice, and—crucially—the possible impacts of my research, not just on other scholars, but on real-life political processes and relationships. On top of this, I struggle with how to meaningfully overcome my own situation of privilege as a white, female scholar from the Global North and the exigencies of English-speaking academia, which are often incompatible with the dynamics and interests of the Global South. Indeed, knowledge production frequently reproduces colonial relationships and even the most well-intentioned ethics committees and concerns over “due diligence” may actually reproduce power dynamics between the North and the South. In this context, the edited volume Knowledge for Peace. Transitional Justice and the Politics of Knowledge in Theory and Practice1 offers an engaging and timely read for all scholars, who, like me, continue to grapple with these issues. Focusing on the field of Transitional Justice (TJ), and with broad reference to cases from the African continent, Briony Jones (University of Warwick, UK) and Ulrike Lühe (Swisspeace/University of Basel) bring together a truly diverse group of authors (from scholars to practitioners) to discuss the impact of how knowledge is produced—particularly power dynamics and insider/outsider status—on peace-building processes. The interface between theory and practice is the backbone of the book, which opens up a discussion on the high-stakes contexts of mass human rights violations. In recent years, there has been an emerging academic discussion on the (neo)colonial nature of TJ2 and a couple of noteworthy reflections on how scholars from the Global North might usefully carry out fieldwork in such contexts.3 However, few go as far in content or are as original in perspective [End Page 210] as Knowledge for Peace, for reasons I shall outline below. The volume opens with a very helpful introduction in which the two editors (Jones and Lühe) explain the rationale behind the book, namely that “[t]he field of transitional justice is characterized by substantial and difficult debates over what ‘better’ looks like, and we offer our contribution to these debates with this book on the politics of knowledge.”4 Having situated the volume in several debates within TJ scholarship and practice—including “knowledge imperialism”—they turn to discuss the two key themes that run through the chapters, namely: the interlinkages between the processes and politics of knowledge production; and the research-policy-practice nexus. The opening chapter also summarises the contributions of the different authors and explains the way in which the volume is organised: a first part, which offers a series of discussions on the politics of knowledge from a theoretical perspective; a second part, which explores the linkages between knowledge production and agenda-setting; and a third part which focuses on the profiles and expertise of knowledge producers. Rather than summarising the contents of the different chapters that together make up the three sections of the edited volume, here I would like to point to four particularly original and thought-provoking chapters and tease out their contributions for our understanding of the politics of knowledge and its implications for the field of Transitional Justice. The first is Chapter 4 “Producing knowledge on and for transitional justice: reflections on a collaborative research project,” co-authored by Briony Jones, Ulrike Lühe, Gilbert Fokou, Kuyang Harriet Logo, Leben...

Advancing Reproductive Justice in Latin America Through a Transitional Justice Lens

Reproductive autonomy is a pivotal part of women’s access to equal citizenship, yet it has not been included in any international nor regional human rights treaty. In the past decades, the U.N. Committees, notably the CEDAW Committee, and regional human rights bodies, particularly the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights, have timidly advanced reproductive justice through their jurisprudence, including through the use of reparations. Drawing from the standards of reparations developed in the field of transitional justice, human rights bodies increasingly rely on reparations to enhance the transformative effects of their decisions. These reparations intend to include a gender-perspective in their design and aim to ensure the non-repetition of human rights violation, not only to the victim, but to society. Constitutional courts in Latin America are increasingly relying on the standards of reparations in their own decisions, including in those on reproductive justice. In this Article, I analyze two recent rulings from Latin American constitutional courts–one from Colombia and one from Ecuador–to understand how courts can use reparations to advance reproductive justice. I analyze these particular rulings for two reasons: (1) Both rulings have the potential to develop reproductive jurisprudence in the region where high courts have traditionally imported international and comparative law to resolve legal debates over reproductive rights; and (2) Both rulings challenge the traditional concept of reparations and offer an opportunity to rethink how the remedy can be deployed in a human rights context.

International Law and Transitional Justice: Exploring Some Challenges Through the Colombian Case

Latin America has always been central to the configuration, interpretation, and operation of the field of transitional justice. Starting in the late 1980s with contributions from scholars interested in democratic transitions after dictatorships in the Southern Cone, the 1996 signing of the Peace Agreement in Guatemala, and the Truth Commission in Peru, to the more recent case of Colombia, Latin American academics and activists have contributed significantly to the theory and practice of transitional justice. This essay explores a question central to recent transitional justice processes: the interaction and possible contradictions between the aim of ending a violent internal conflict and the demands imposed by international law. Colombia serves as an example. The Colombian case is informed by all previous experiences, but it is also novel because it is the first transitional justice process established in the region since the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Although the Colombian process is still being implemented and it is too early to claim its success or failure, the case offers important insights into the tense, complex, and overarching interactions between international law, internal peace, and transitional justice. This essay explores how local and external actors involved in negotiating and implementing the agreement presented international law as if it were univocal and universal, as if there were no competing interpretations within the discipline, and as if it were neutral in relation to local political discussions. Building upon this analysis, the goal is to shed light upon the ideological uses of international law.

Appraising the Socio-Economic Turn in Reparations: Transitional Justice for Cholera Victims in Haiti

Abstract∞ After belatedly apologizing for the cholera epidemic in Haiti, the ‘New Approach to Cholera in Haiti’ by the UN and the promise of material assistance to victims through a ‘victim-centred approach’ highlight how the victims turn and the socio-economic turn are increasingly pivotal in the field of transitional justice. In light of these growing calls, we suggest a matrix to clarify the debate made of two separate dimensions: the focus of reparations – collective versus individual – and the means of reparations – symbolic versus material. Based on fieldwork conducted in March 2017 in the communities most affected by the cholera outbreak, this article demonstrates how the tensions between reparations offered by the UN (with a preference for collective symbolic reparations) and the reparations demanded by the victims (individual material reparations) can help understand the current stalemate in Haiti, and hopefully inform the next steps in the process of remedy for the victims.

Land and Transitional Justice in Brazil

Abstract This article explores how Brazilian transitional justice has handled land dispossession suffered by peasants and Indigenous peoples during the dictatorship of 1964–1985. The article contextualizes the repression suffered by social movements fighting for land before and after the 1964 coup. Despite the fact that the National Truth Commission created a Working Group to investigate violence against peasants and Indigenous peoples, land dispossession was not considered a serious human rights violation. We also analyze the difficulties that peasants and Indigenous peoples have faced to access reparation programs implemented by the Brazilian state. Finally, we highlight the setbacks undertaken by the current and former federal governments (of Bolsonaro and Temer) in the field of transitional justice, which contribute to the continuation of violence and impunity in the present.

Reproductive Violence as a Category of Analysis: Disentangling the Relationship between ‘the Sexual’ and ‘the Reproductive’ in Transitional Justice

Abstract There has been limited engagement with reproductive violence in the field of transitional justice. Highlighting how, where this has taken place, reproductive violence has tended to be approached through the lens of sexual violence, this article problematises the category of ‘the sexual’ in understanding conflict-related violence. Advancing an approach to reproductive violence that centralises the notions of reproductive autonomy and choice, along with recognition of the structural conditions within which they can be exercised, the article argues that placing acts of reproductive violence within a frame of ‘sexual violence’ obscures the complexities of harm inflicted on women and masks the distinct gendered structures that underpin different forms of violence. The article ultimately argues that conceptualising reproductive violence in this way can contribute to greater understanding within transitional justice of the diverse harms experienced by women and has the potential to challenge the gendered normalisation of control over their reproductive functions.

What Happened to Transitional Justice in Croatia After the EU Accession?

This paper proposes to see Croatia’s becoming a member state of the European Union in 2013 as a particular critical juncture that created uncertainty over the type of decisions the government would take in the field of transitional justice once international pressure had stopped. It compares the period before and after the accession by looking into the three elements of transitional justice policy that were given priority by the EU conditionality framework – fighting impunity for war crimes, fostering reconciliation and respect for and protection of minority rights. It finds that all three have deteriorated in the post-accession period. On the one hand, the findings illustrate the power of international pressure, but on the other hand, they question the overall effectiveness of the conditionality policy, as it seems to not have affected deeper societal issues at stake and has not resulted in true transformation.

Sexual Violence Against Children and Transitional Justice: Bearing Witness and Preserving Testimony About Injustice in Childhood

Efforts to come to terms with sexual violence against children and adolescents are predicated on a desire to achieve justice. Based on the work done by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany, this article attempts to identify the interfaces between the Inquiry’s undertakings and the field of transitional justice. Using an approach informed by the theory of childhood, it examines the issues that arise when survivors bear witness to past childhood events. This must adopt a perspective that is sensitive to childhood and adolescence as unique life phases. That, in turn, requires accounting for concomitant factors, such as the context presented by a child’s growth and development, the function of families, the role played by educational institutions, and the legal position accorded children by society. The article thus adopts a framework rooted in childhood theory that considers children both generally as human beings and specifically as children.

Repetitions Towards an End: Judicial Accountability and the Vicissitudes of Justice

ABSTRACT In post-authoritarian regimes official judicial proceedings, specifically criminal trials of crimes against humanity, constitute both end-points and intensely desired goals. In the Argentine context, these proceedings are shaped by numerous repetitions. In this paper I explore the process of justice making, the repetitions of testimonies, of legal processes and of historical antecedents, and I query the different ends that these varied repetitions bring into view. Each of the three ends I describe are facets of Argentinian justice making – a desired and sought out goal in the long-aftermath of the last civil–military dictatorship (1976–1983). But, against what seem to be the key expectations of many in the field of transitional justice, these ends are not finite nor do they bring complete closure. Instead, they may be one version of justice, and perhaps the only one we can expect after many years of impunity.

The Multiple Aspects of ‘Time’ Rendering Justice for War Crimes in Iraq

Abstract This article takes the starting point in an examination of the case study of accountability for UK war crimes in Iraq, to engage recent developments in the transitional justice field. The article observes that while some passage of time in the context of war-related crimes tends to be a precondition for any kind of justice, the passage of time can easily end up complicating and obscuring the prospects for justice. The article demonstrates how accountability at the domestic level for these crimes has become increasingly implausible with time, partly due to the development of a prevailing narrative of ‘cycles’ of ineffective investigations (and re-investigations) that have become politically loaded and increasingly unpopular especially in what could be labelled the ‘pro-military establishment’.

Transformative justice in a settler colonial transition: implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada

ABSTRACT The transformative justice agenda within the field of transitional justice has yet to take up settler colonialism and Indigenous peoples. This paper develops the idea of an indigenised, decolonial transformative justice that encompasses relational change at the grassroots level through acts of Indigenous resurgence, settler decolonisation and allyship, as well as structural transformations at the state and global levels through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada currently is in a transitional moment and there has been a perceptible shift in its position toward the Declaration. It originally voted against the Declaration but is now committed to implementation as per the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation. A key issue is the extent to which the Declaration will be subsumed under Section 35 of the Constitution, which recognises existing Aboriginal Rights. The paper argues that Section 35 can only become a ‘full box of rights’ if the lid is fully opened to embrace the transformative, decolonising provisions of the Declaration, particularly those around free, prior and informed consent. Given the apparent reluctance of the state to disrupt the colonial status quo, grassroots and transnational mobilizations and strategies that enact the performative element of Indigenous rights will remain key.

Using restorative justice to rethink the temporality of transition in Chile

Assumptions of linear progress and a clean break with the past have long characterised transitional justice interventions. This notion of temporality has increasingly been problematised in transitional justice scholarship and practice. Scholars have argued that a more complex understanding of temporalities is needed that better accommodates the temporal messiness and complexity of transitions, including their ongoingness, multilayeredness and multidirectionality. Existing critiques, however, have not yet resulted in a new conceptual framework for thinking about transitional temporalities. This article builds on insights from the field of restorative justice to develop such a framework. This framework foregrounds longer timelines, multilayered temporalities and temporal ecologies to better reflect reality on the ground and victims’ lived experiences. We argue that restorative justice is a useful starting point to develop such a temporal framework because of its actor-oriented, flexible and interactive nature and proximity to the field of transitional justice. Throughout this article we use the case of Chile to illustrate some of the complex temporal dynamics of transition and to illustrate what a more context-sensitive temporal lens could mean for such cases of un/finished transition.

Social solidarity as a dimension of transitional justice: the case of Cartography and Identification of Mass Graves in post-conflict Colombia

ABSTRACT The field of transitional justice lacks a comprehensive understanding to the role that social solidarity plays in transitional justice contexts. There is a lack of knowledge of the means through which victims can exercise their social agency to explore mechanisms of reparation beyond truth commissions, tribunals, and trials. This article argues that social solidarity is a crucial dimension and a novel perspective from which to develop transitional justice processes from a victims’ point of view in post-conflict societies. Employing a participative action research method, this article’s importance rests in the idea that Colombian victims’ groups from Eastern Antioquia view social solidarity as a crucial dimension of transitional justice in developing the project Cartography and Identification of Mass Graves. It establishes that this effort is a powerful novel mechanism to claim justice, reparation, recognition, and guarantees of non-recurrence from an unofficial angle. It demonstrates that comprehending social solidarity as a vital dimension of transitional justice stresses the importance of victims’ social agency to conduct collaborative collective actions in order to support inclusive processes of disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) beyond official agendas and narratives.

Abuse of Punishment in Transitional Justice And Its Damage to Construction Democratic Political - The Iraqi Experience after 2003 as a Model

Objectives: The importance of the study stems from the fact that the region with all its countries, including Iraq, was and still lacks political stability, whether due to internal factors or external influences, or the conciliation of workers, and since transitional justice is an important idea, and essential in managing the stages of change, a solid democratic state that concerns everyone and cares, Everyone participates, from here, and through the centrality of the issue of change and the importance of the issue of transitional justice in it, and through the fact that the transitional experience in Iraq is a practical experience that took place early in the region, and in a pluralistic society that reflects the previous regime in which there are many features, and common to most of the prevailing political systems in the region This makes the study of his experience in this topic and the problems he encountered a suitable case for a useful study with an impact on more than one level. The research paper aims to study the negative aspects of Iraq's experience in the field of transitional justice, and its transformation from a transitional justice case into a tool of factional and partisan revenge, whose procedures are marred by a lot of arbitrariness, which makes the topic useful for those who work to implement these programs in the future in order to avoid problems and mistakes . Methods : The study adopts an analytical, inductive approach that relies on uncovering facts by starting from the details, then proceeds gradually to laws, general rules, and the college, where the Iraqi experience, its details, and the internal and external influences that accompanied it will be examined, down to the features and features And the facts of this experience, especially the negative aspects of it that affected the state of stability and construction in it, and this is particularly evident by analyzing the trends, paths, and problematic of transitional justice interventions in the current political transformations in Iraq after 2003, because understanding the course of the struggle for power and the influence between the components It will help us understand the dimensions of the competition for power and influence between these political blocs that represented the Iraqi opposition during the days of the political system under the rule of the (Baath Party) before its fall in 2003. By perpetuating the phenomenon of competition and conflict between political blocs, including the perpetuation of two phenomena: The first is uncertainty about the possibility of renewed violence in the future. The second is the intense competition over how to institutionalize the balance of power in Iraq after 2003. Results: The failure of transitional justice in Iraq, and the failure to implement its real mechanisms that do not contradict human rights principles, was the reason for Iraq to reach its current stage, and the increase in impunity and injustice of persons who were not the cause of committing any human rights violations. The results indicate that the last feature is indeed important because the deep partisan motives linked mainly to sectarianism, ethnicity, nationalism, and to a lesser extent regionalism, are the main determinants of the competition between the Iraqi political blocs that took over the rule of Iraq after 2003. The reasonable explanation is that a sense of the narrow political and partisan gains of these Iraqi political blocs may compensate for the debts owed due to past violations and urge a preference for avoiding the pursuit of truth or punishment for fear that political gains may be threatened in some way. Conclusions : Failure to resort to fair legal accountability causes new human rights violations, so the following question can be raised: Does ignoring legal accountability increase the number of perpetrators of violations, and help some of the perpetrators in the previous regime to get away from punishment, and wrong others? And that the negative engagement in transitional justice file, ignoring legal mechanisms, and to obey the wishes of the party, and lead to factional influence in the political process and thus stumble in the democratic transition? Keywords : Democratic political Iraqi punishment transitional justice damage construction DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-6-03 Publication date: March 31 st 2021

Philanthropic Justice: The Role of Private Foundations in Transitional Justice Processes

The paper I am presenting today is titled “Philanthropic Justice,” where I explore the role of private foundations in transitional justice (TJ) processes. It is a part of my Ph.D. project, which focuses on a wider range of private actors in the field of TJ. But for today, I chose to focus only on philanthropic foundations.

A Constitution for Peace: Federalism and Consociationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The present paper draws on the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, resulted from the Dayton Peace Agreement, in order to explain how the elements of federalism and consociationalism can become important tools in the field of transitional justice. By combining federalism and consociationalism, it will be demonstrated how shared-rule and self-rule can be useful in addressing the demands of territorially concentrated ethnic groups for more autonomy and self-government, while at the same time preserving the territorial integrity of the state. It also explains the role of post-conflict constitutional design processes on their ability to reconcile groups, to address intolerable grievances and to prevent further polarization by providing a common vision of the future of a state.