Transitional Justice Mechanisms Research Articles

Transitional Justice in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia in a Comparative Framework

This thesis aims to enhance transitional justice studies with a focus on the Balkan peninsula, by providing a comparative analysis of the extent of transitional justice mechanisms in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. With the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1980s, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of new states in the 1990s, the concept of Transitional Justice (TJ) saw a significant rise in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was further propelled by the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the prolonged breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992) as well as the fall of the communist dictatorship in Albania (1990). The emergence of new states and the state-building processes that followed the political and social changes also brought new challenges and conflicts, although they marked the end of significantly repressive political regimes. Considering that the implementation of TJ has undergone several changes over time and is dependent on the different settings in which it was employed, it is necessary to conduct extensive comparative research to determine the extent to which TJ differs in post-communist and post-conflict nations. The study has developed three main hypotheses: (1) The limited achievement of lustration law in Albania has conditioned the current status of transitional justice; (2) The state-building process has contributed to the evolution of Transitional Justice in Kosovo; (3) The power-sharing process as a TJ pillar in North Macedonia has fueled TJ in the country. By utilizing a mixed methods approach, data was collected through elite interviews, conducted in the three countries with 44 representatives from academia, politics, media, and civil society. To conclude, two hypotheses are fully upheld in terms of the limited achievement of lustration law and its implications with the current status of transitional justice in Albania; and the contribution of state-building in Kosovo to the evolution of transitional justice. The third hypothesis related to the power-sharing process in North Macedonia as a fueling mechanism for the evolution of transitional justice is partially upheld. Received: 13 February 2024 / Accepted: 30 April 2024 / Published: 5 May 2024

Learning from Civil Society Actors in Turkey: Using Transitional Justice in an Ongoing Conflict

ABSTRACT∞ This article examines the role of civil society in the implementation of transitional justice in Turkey’s ongoing Kurdish conflict, which is characterized by historical state violence and a lack of official transitional justice processes. Drawing on 24 interviews, the research reveals the evolution of civil society engagement from its peak during the 2013–2015 peace process to its decline under increasing authoritarianism. The research argues that, despite challenges, civil society retains the potential to drive incremental change in the absence of formal transitional justice mechanisms. However, the authoritarian regime has significantly curtailed its capacity, creating a limited civic space for transitional justice. The article highlights the need for stronger links between civil society in Turkey and international transitional justice scholarship. Such collaboration could empower activists, enabling them to overcome challenges and increase their effectiveness. Turkey offers a unique case for transitional justice scholars and practitioners to learn from civil society actors committed to pursuing justice.

Singing truth to power: Transformative (gender) justice, musical spatialities and creative performance in periods of transition from violence

Feminist security studies have demonstrated that transitional justice processes worldwide have largely fallen short in providing actual transformative justice for women and that many gendered war experiences remain largely unaccounted for. Through an activist-academic collaboration and mobilizing feminist scholarship on war, embodiment and emotions together with literature on transitional justice and the arts, this article argues that women’s collective artistic resistance can foster deeper cultural and structural changes in transitional justice settings. By delving into the case of the women’s music collective Enkelé in Colombia, the article examines the creative possibilities afforded by music and choreography to document and testify to an enduring culture of violence and their role in probing the effectiveness of post–peace agreement transitional justice. We contend that paying attention to musical performances is key because these can express new visions of justice that are not constrained by the limits of what is possible and feasible in formal transitional justice mechanisms and can offer corporeal connectivity able to bring together communities fractured by war and armed conflict and to give visibility to knowledges and practices of memory and healing of marginalized communities.

Just collateral damage? Accountability of economic elites in peacebuilding and transitional justice in Colombia

AbstractAnalyzing how transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms address the role of economic and political elites in contexts of widespread violence is crucial for understanding their possible transformative impact. The type of challenges faced by TJ instruments when trying to deal with economic elites involved in human rights violations also reflects the extent and degree of these groups' power in a specific transitional context. Looking at the two main transitional justice processes in Colombia, this paper argues that accountability for these privileged actors tends to materialize in cases in which the alliances between different kinds of elites are threatened, or even collapse. However, as this article will show, judicial TJ mechanisms on their own can only have a very limited transformative impact on the accountability of economic elites and their liability for human rights violations in the absence of strong support by state institutions. TJ instruments can provide an exceptional framework to trigger and motivate meaningful transformations. Nonetheless, the concrete realization of these changes far exceeds the possibilities, capacity, and resources of TJ, which in and of itself cannot replace state institutions, especially an ordinary justice system that should continue to make progress on these cases.

Truth Commissions and the Prevention of Targeted Mass Killings

ABSTRACT While transitional justice endeavors aim to help countries come to terms with violent pasts, policymakers and practitioners often claim that transitional justice mechanisms help prevent future violence as well. No cross-national research has tested this claim, however. This article begins to fill this gap by examining whether one of the most frequently used mechanisms of transitional justice, the truth commission, is associated with the onset of targeted mass killings (TMKs) in 27 countries between 1972 and 2018. Our differences-in-differences estimation approach finds that countries that have implemented truth commissions see a significant reduction in the recurrence of TMKs compared to those countries that did not implement a truth commission. Additional analyses reveal that while issuance of a final report and recommendations for reforms are not associated with the onset of TMKs, truth commissions that do not recommend the punishment of perpetrators are more likely to reduce TMKs in the years following the truth commission. The article ends by discussing the functions of truth commissions and proposing how their preventive capacity may be strengthened further through the application of an atrocity prevention lens.

Legacies of Colonial Violence in Contemporary Transitional Justice: Memories of Mau Mau, the ‘Kapenguria Six’ and the ‘Ocampo Six’ in Kenya

ABSTRACT∞ This article assesses the enduring impact of colonial violence in responses to modern conflict by transitional justice mechanisms. It presents an example of how societies continue to be structured by racial and colonial injustice and how this influences contemporary transitional justice. This is done through an analysis of the popular memory of the Mau Mau insurgency from 1952 to 1960 in Kenya, the trial of the six Kenyan nationalists known as the ‘Kapenguria Six’ by the British colonial administration and the trials of six Kenyans alleged to be most responsible for orchestrating the 2007–2008 post-election violence in Kenya, known as the ‘Ocampo Six’ before the International Criminal Court (ICC). In the Kenyan context, the influence of memories of colonial violence enabled the promotion of political agendas and arguably coloured public debate surrounding the two Kenya cases before the ICC. Transitional justice mechanisms such as the ICC do not operate in an ahistorical vacuum and international criminal trials as a form of transitional justice may be contested where there is no genuine accountability, redress or reparations for victims of colonial crimes. However, the juxtaposition of colonial crimes and the ICC prosecutions in Kenya also raises important questions relating to accountability for historical crimes in former colonies, the temporal limitations of transitional justice mechanisms and their unequal application.

The Post-Ongwen Case Period and the Reconciliation Process in Northern Uganda: Local Communities as a Site of Knowledge

Abstract By providing victims with more space in the Ongwen case, the International Criminal Court (icc) has significantly contributed to the healing of the trauma and community reconciliation in northern Uganda. That said, this court has also raised issues that could affect local efforts to achieve peace, namely the positioning of victims of child soldiers vis-à-vis criminal child soldiers. Drawing on qualitative data collected through focus group discussions with some community members from locations under investigation by the icc, this sociolegal study examines the victims’ narratives about child soldiers and the different ideas of human rights that emerge. Then, it explores how these ideas may shape future transitional justice mechanisms designed in the global sphere. Finally, it discusses the extent to which they may impact the relevance of current justice initiatives. Overall, this paper analyzes the substantive effect of victim participation in the Ongwen case on local peacebuilding initiatives in northern Uganda.

Law, political economy and war reparation: The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

AbstractWhat are the after‐effects of the Bosnia and Herzegovinian (BH) transition from a post‐socialist, post‐genocide, and post‐ethno‐nationalist state into a European liberal democracy? This article makes a case for war reparation and argues that while poverty reduction has not been among the stated aims of transitional justice mechanisms, it is of critical importance to study war victims' deprivation in the context of historical patterns of structural injustice and examine liberal reconstruction policies that failed to provide compensation and legal redress for gross violations of human rights and serious violations of humanitarian law. The article uses the historical sociology approach as a method of analysis to investigate how moving away from a socialist to a capitalist economic model, from war to peace, and from one party political system to liberal democracy has resulted in structural injustice and growing levels of poverty that adversely impact most vulnerable Bosnians. The article presents an argument that the lack of post‐war reparation programs, coupled with an inadequate emphasis on political regime change, poverty reduction programs and social and economic rights such as access to welfare, cash assistance, food, transportation, education, pension, and disability benefits to ensure the quality of living is detrimental to everyday lives of war victims and people who live at the bottom of the society.

Transitional Justice Status in Albania Through Local Perceptions

This research article aims to enhance regional studies with a focus on the Balkan peninsula, by providing a comprehensive analysis of the extent of transitional justice mechanisms in Albania and its local perception among the citizens. With the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America in 1980s, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the emergence of new states in 1990s, the concept of Transitional Justice (TJ) saw a significant rise in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was further propelled by the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the prolonged breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992) as well as the fall of the communist dictatorship in Albania (1990). The emergence of new states and the state-building processes that followed the political and social changes also brought new challenges and conflicts, although they marked the end of significantly repressive political regimes. Considering that the implementation of TJ has undergone several changes over time and dependent of the different settings in which it was employed, it is necessary to conduct extensive research to determine the extent to which TJ differs in post-communist and post-conflict nations. The main research question of this article is: How is reflected the current status of transitional justice in Albania in the lens of public perceptions? To achieve the goal, this article employs quantitative data through a survey conducted with 1021 respondents in Albania. The results of the study show that there are significant differences between the responses of participants who reported having knowledge of Transitional Justice and those who reported being unaware, particularly with their understanding of the number of victims affected. p-value <0.05.
 
 Received: 6 September 2023 / Accepted: 29 November 2023 / Published: 5 January 2024

Addressing environmental damages in contexts of armed conflict through transitional justice in Colombia

Abstract It is unquestionable that Colombian armed conflicts have had adverse impacts on the natural environment in the country. Current transitional justice mechanisms offer an opportunity to recognize harm and responsibility, establish restorative sanctions and reparations and adopt public policies for the recovery of ecosystems and prevention of further damage. This article focuses on how transitional justice mechanisms, especially the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, have addressed the effects of armed conflicts on the natural environment. Specifically, it analyzes the criminal characterization of environmental degradation, the question of whether amnesties and pardons could be granted for such conducts, precautionary measures and the implementation of restorative sanctions related to the environment. It presents some challenges regarding the preservation of the natural environment due to the persistence of armed conflicts after the 2016 Peace Accord between the government and the FARC-EP guerrillas, and the sustainability of reparations for victims and prevention of further damage. It also sustains that the developments of current transitional justice mechanisms may have significant influence on ongoing and future peace negotiations with other armed groups and the processes for establishing responsibility for environmental damages.

Transitional justice options for post-war Russia

ABSTRACT In February 2022, Vladimir Putin, under the pretext of defending Russians in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, launched an all-out attack on sovereign Ukraine. Since then, Russia has violated multiple principles of just warfare. We consider the question of accountability for these crimes, outlining two scenarios: (1) the Putin regime remains in place, and (2) it is succeeded by a post-war regime that undertakes transitional justice as part of a broader effort at democratization. We review international institutions adjudicating criminal responsibility and domestic transitional justice mechanisms that eschew criminal approaches to accountability in favor of personnel policies. Combining limited purges with truth-revelation can prevent the accumulation of grievances and help rebuild a democratic culture. Although normative standards of justice might demand harsh punishment of Russian leaders by criminal tribunals, focusing on broad personnel transitional justice – purges and lustrations – carried out domestically can be conducive to long-term democratic stability in Russia.

The ‘Domino Effect’ of Ongoing Violence on Transitional Justice: The Case of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace

ABSTRACT∞ This article examines the tangible consequences of ongoing armed violence for the implementation of Colombia’s innovative transitional court, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP). Establishing transitional justice mechanisms in contexts of persistent armed violence poses significant challenges and the implementation process is likely to seem flawed or lacking to those actors involved. These complex scenarios raise critical questions for the field of transitional justice, notably regarding the expectations of victims and the feasibility of providing truth, justice and reparation in hostile settings. Based on the case of the Colombia’s northwestern Urabá region, this article argues that contexts of ongoing violence have a direct adverse effect on the possibility of the meaningful and effective participation of victims, perpetrators and other key actors in transitional justice processes. Consequently, this restricted participation initiates a ‘domino effect,’ which negatively impacts other transitional goals, including, in the specific case of the JEP, its restorative aims.

Transitional justice mechanisms and processes: international experience for restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty and national security

The mechanisms and processes used in post-conflict countries that contributed to the restoration and ensuring of sustainable peace after the end of armed conflict or active hostilities are analysed. Among the elements of transitional justice, the author identifies those whose implementation is appropriate and possible before the end of the active phase of the conflict in Ukraine: bringing to individual responsibility, recording, documenting and collecting evidence of crimes allegedly committed on the territory of Ukraine (including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression), cooperation with the International Criminal Court on international crimes, determining the procedure for bringing the top military and political leadership of the russian federation to justice (tribunal); establishing the circumstances of the conflict and recording them, which is especially important in the context of information and psychological operations and other methods of hybrid warfare used by the Russian Federation. With regard to reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence of the conflict, it is already advisable to discuss both issues, develop strategies for compensating Ukraine for losses and act during and after the de-occupation of the territories.
 It has been also noted that the issue of exemption from liability and punishment may be raised during negotiations on the terms of ending the conflict, as well as the issue of mitigation of punishment in case of guilt and cooperation in establishing the truth. In this aspect, the experience of Colombia has been analysed with a reservation regarding the individualisation of the concept of transitional justice, taking into account specific circumstances. In particular, it has been determined that for Ukraine, the experience of transitional justice in Colombia can be taken into account when addressing a number of issues of amnesty, organisation of work of truth commissions and others, with an understanding of the different nature of the conflict in Colombia, which is purely internal (non-international armed conflict).

Genocide‐time: Political violence reckoning in Rwanda

AbstractThis article looks at how political violence in Rwanda, that of the genocide against Tutsi in 1994 and beyond, is remembered, narrated, and embedded in everyday sociality. It makes two related arguments. Taking the aftermath of Rwanda's Gacaca courts (a transitional justice mechanism implemented between 2005 and 2012) as my point of entry, I argue first that violence, though narrated as past in these courts, is imagined as returning in the future, and the present is the space to prepare for this inevitable return. This structuring temporal logic, or genocide‐time, undergirds everyday social relations between the protagonists of Gacaca courts years after their official end. Second, both survivors and perpetrators of the genocide claim forms of racialized victimhood, a legacy of European imperial categorizations of Rwandans into Hutus and Tutsis. Genocide‐time signals a temporal moment in which ethnic categories, crucial for colonial management, become racialized and deeply entangled with political violence. Shared claims to racialized victimhood today, I argue, index this longer history.

Lost in Translation? Agency and Incommensurability in the Transnational Travelling of Discourses of Sexualized Harm

This article argues for incommensurability, incoherence, and difference as the grounds through which to think about sexualized harm and its redress. It seeks to remove the “me” from the “too”, and to instead consider the structures of white supremacy and neocolonial power that have facilitated white Western feminists’ ability to participate in shaping a hegemonic discourse of sexualized harm and its transnational travelling. The article traces the author’s personal genealogy of rights work in the context of shifts in international jurisprudence in relation to wartime sexualized violence. It looks back and reflects on an eight-year feminist participatory action research project that accompanied 54 Mayan women protagonists who survived a multiplicity of harm, including sexual violence, during Guatemala’s 36-year genocidal war. The project documented the protagonists’ engagement with transitional justice mechanisms, including a paradigmatic court case and a national reparations program, as part of their struggles for redress. The concept of “protagonism” is used to understand agency in the aftermath of genocidal violence as relational, co-constructed, and imbued with power. The meaning of sexualized harm is always “in-translation” between Western and Mayan onto-epistemological positionings, as Mayan women seek to suture land-body-territory in their multifaceted strategies for redress that engage but always exceed rights regimes.

Judging Genocide: Emotional Labor During Transitional Justice

Despite the proliferation of transitional justice, scholars have rarely researched the emotional toll on those who implement transitional justice mechanisms. This article accordingly examines the emotion management techniques employed by eighty-five judges who served in Rwanda’s post-genocide gacaca courts. Most of the intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion management strategies we find are gendered, with men generally emphasizing strength and women underscoring empathy and understanding. Moreover, the dimensions of identity that were most salient during the conflict also shaped the judges’ interpersonal emotion management strategies. Specifically, judges who were not targeted during the genocide focused on regulating emotions tied to punishing defendants, while judges who were targeted emphasized survivors’ emotional catharses. As such, our findings show how conflict divisions and gender norms structure the expression of emotion during transitional justice processes.

How Locally Owned and Sustainable Are Victims’ Groups in Postconflict and Transitional Settings? Reflections from Northern Uganda

ABSTRACT Victims’ groups in postconflict settings have gained increasing attention in transitional justice scholarship and programming, as entry points for victims to engage with external transitional justice mechanisms, or as vehicles to facilitate healing, recovery or justice making on the micro level. These groups are often presented in terms of local ownership, victims’ participation and self-reliance. Based on work in Uganda, I have previously argued that victims’ groups constitute locally owned and sustainable resources that can facilitate a sense of justice for survivors on their own terms. Yet, based on recent field research observations, I have to ask myself: how locally owned and sustainable are these groups really? Due to a lack of donor support and external resources, the group that I worked with has become inactive since 2020. In this Note, I explore the reasons for and implications of this, with the intention of critically engaging with some of my previous arguments.

Escaping or Reinforcing Hierarchies? Norm Relations in Transitional Justice

Abstract The global project of transitional justice (TJ) traditionally has been packaged in a multi-pillar model with criminal justice, truth recovery, reparations, institutional reform, and memorialization, and the norms they enshrine, seemingly presented as interventions of equivalent status at the level of policy. This article aims to enhance the theorizing on TJ as a “norm cluster” by comparatively examining the relations between the norms found in the cluster in transitional practices in Colombia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We claim that the relations between the norms of TJ are hierarchically organized, with the anti-impunity norm being positioned as normatively superior. Through an analysis of TJ processes in the two countries in the past three decades, we discuss how such a hierarchy was established, secured, and challenged. Our findings show that hierarchical relations arise primarily due to legitimacy concerns and are manifested as changes in the internal structure of the anti-impunity norm whereby its prescribed behaviors or measures, i.e., criminal trials, seek to fulfill a range of new values. We argue that, in search for ownership and legitimacy, political actors have overemphasized the role of criminal trials by increasing their “social weight” and positioned them as indispensable for achieving the values of truth, reconciliation, and non-recurrence, disturbing the internal structures and co-opting the spaces of other measures in the TJ norm cluster. Such normative superiority of anti-impunity is significant and detrimental for the TJ global project. It has resulted in other TJ mechanisms being weakened by or dependent on judicial procedures, and it has enhanced competing and revisionist truth-making while promoting a narrow understanding of accountability. Ultimately, we establish that the normative superiority of criminal justice continues to challenge the prospects of complex and comprehensive TJ and that the place of anti-impunity in the norm cluster should be rethought.

Memory and the social meanings of famine

Famine theory has overlooked the role of memory in constituting the social meaning of famine. This seminal collection of papers restores the cross-disciplinary study of famines, foregrounding social anthropology, history and comparative politics, in the question of how famines are understood by those in the afflicted societies, and how memories and meanings are shaped by social and political context. The collection plays an important role in focussing attention on transitional justice mechanisms for starvation crimes.

Egypt after the 2011 uprising: the implications of transitional justice in a non-liberal transition

ABSTRACT Analysing transitional justice mechanisms in the non-liberal transition of post-revolutionary Egypt, from the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak to the election of ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, this article seeks to enhance the understanding of the character of the transition period and the re-establishment of authoritarianism in Egypt, but also to shed light on the implications of the manipulation of transitional justice in order to bolster repressive structures in non-liberal transitions. Based on analysing transitional justice as a contested process whose mechanism and outcomes are shaped according to specific domestic power structures and coalitions, the article argues that the ability of Egypt’s elites, led by the military, to control the transitional justice process and to manipulate it to enhance their power and interests depended on their coercive capacity but was also a product of their ability to utilise the deep gaps among political forces, which had different interests and perceptions regarding transitional justice (reformative or revolutionary) in order to create shifting alliances and agreements on the boundaries of transitional justice and hence affect its outcomes.