Transitional Justice Programs Research Articles

Talisman Energy and the Second Sudanese Civil War

Holding corporations accountable for complicity in international crimes is especially difficult, due to lacking international legal guidelines and the fact that corporations do not become complicit for the same reasons that perpetrators commit crimes. The oil company Talisman Energy has been praised for its 2003 divestment from Sudan, but the corporation was never held accountable for its involvement in the second Sudanese civil war and victims were not compensated. This paper analyzes the Talisman Energy case through the lens of the International Commission of Jurists’ framework for corporate complicity, and illustrates the advantages of an adaptable knowledge and foresight threshold complemented by measures of causality and proximity. Adopting a holistic framework like this in legal provisions may prevent wrongful acquittals in the future and contribute to transitional justice for the victims of international crimes. While there is more work to do to design the appropriate legal provisions, this exploratory study recommends three fields of action: a broader awareness of the corporate accountability gap; a consideration of corporate accountability in transitional justice programs; and further research on the overlap between corporate accountability and transitional justice.

Trying Perpetrators: Denazification Trials and Support for Democracy in West Germany

We study the effects of transitional justice (TJ) programs that punish large numbers of human rights violators through the lenses of social psychology theories on how individuals respond to punishment in allocative situations, including how defendants in court trials evaluate their verdicts. We analyze subnational variation in procedures and outcomes of denazification trials in West Germany during 1946-1947. Consistently with established findings in social psychology, we find that procedural justice and the distributive fairness of outcomes can compensate for the anti-democratic attitudinal effects of being a defendant in a TJ trial. We also find evidence that procedural justice influences the democratic attitudes of family members of TJ defendants. The study has implications for contemporary cases of TJ programs that affect large numbers of perpetrators.

Genocide in “Common Parlance”: Grief and the Political Persecution of Colombia’s Patriotic Union Party

ABSTRACT “Genocide” is a key frame through which death is given social significance. Scholars have argued that genocide sits at the top of a hierarchy of grief – signalling it as the most profound paradigm through which those killed can be mourned. How does the mourning of life unfold when legal and social conceptualizations of genocide diverge? And what does this divergence tell us about the power of “genocide” as a label for violence? Focusing on the extermination campaign against Colombia’s Patriotic Union (UP) political party, this paper examines how recent transitional justice programmes have interpreted the question of genocide and violence against political groups. I specifically trace the development of two separate, discursive registers of genocide: one legal and one of “common parlance.” In so doing, I contribute to scholarly concern with the question of genocide and political groups in two ways. First, I interpret the exclusion of political groups from legal definitions of genocide as a question of grieveable life. Secondly, scholarly debate has focused on whether or not political groups ought to be protected under genocide law. I diverge from these questions to trace how emergent genocide discourses include political groups as a socially but not legally included within the term’s purview. I thus argue for scholarly attention to how political groups are interpellated in a manner that neither fully recognizes nor denies their status as victims of genocide.

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...

“Take them to Government House or Aso Rock”: Community receptivity to reintegration of Operation Safe Corridor’s deradicalised Ex-Boko Haram members in Northeastern Nigeria

Boko Haram (BH) insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria has been extensively studied but much scholarly attention has not been given to Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC). Yet, it remains the most significant non-kinetic approaches to BH insurgency. This study examines the deradicalisation programme of OPSC, communities’ receptivity to reintegrated ex-BH members (BHMs) and its effects on OPSC objectives and overall efforts at ending BH insurgency in Nigeria. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed for the study. Result revealed that OPSC has attracted demobilisation of BHMs. However, communities are unwilling to accept the ex-BHMs back due to the problems of distrust and widespread perception that government is prioritising the welfare ex-BHMs above the victims of their attrocies. In response, communities are attacking, stigmatising, keeping incommunicado as well as enforcing socio-economic blockade on the ex-BHMs reintegrated into their communities. In turn, reintegrated ex-BHMs are absconding communities and rejoining insurgents, frustrated into committing crimes and this is dis-incentivising BHMs who are willing to demobilise. This trend will make BH retain its deadliness and this will enhance the perpetuation of insurgency and insecurity in Nigeria. It is recommended that government should give more priority to victims of BH attacks as this may encourage community acceptance. It is also recommended that community-level transitional justice and reconciliation programmes should be set up to reconcile ex-BHMs with victims of their attacks.

Coordinating Transitional Justice

AbstractConflict resolution professionals sometimes differ from human rights professionals about the best approaches to transitional justice, particularly with regard to the scope, conditions, and timing of possible amnesties from prosecution for perpetrators of war crimes and human rights abuses. When human rights and conflict resolution professionals work at cross‐purposes, they may work less effectively to end conflict, abuses, and crimes, and to implement peace accords. A consensus among conflict resolution and human rights scholars about which legal norms should govern post‐conflict amnesty programs appears to be developing. Against this emerging legal framework, human rights and conflict resolution professionals should, I argue, develop processes for working together more effectively in the design and implementation of context‐sensitive approaches to transitional justice. These process principles should address the entire conflict period, from escalation through resolution to post‐conflict reconstruction. In this article, I describe a tentative, general framework for coordinating the development of transitional justice programs. This proposed framework is intended to stimulate and guide discussion of these issues among conflict resolution and human rights professionals and scholars.

Transformative Justice, Reparations and Transatlantic Slavery

This article considers lessons recent debates concerning transitional and transformative justice, and surrounding transformative reparations, could offer to discussions regarding reparations for transatlantic slavery. Even transitional justice programmes aiming to provide transformative reparations in the form of development programmes (such as healthcare, education and housing provision) have enabled governments to avoid addressing structural causes of inequalities. The article argues that calling for reparations for transatlantic slavery in the form of development projects is potentially regressive. Framing development programmes as reparations, as parts of the Caribbean Community Ten-Point Plan for reparations do, risks presenting these as necessary only because of powerful states’ duty to make amends for past wrongdoing. The article calls for advocates of reparations for transatlantic slavery to be more explicit in demarcating the backward- and forward-looking foundations of their claims. The importance of symbolic and non-financial reparations ought to be more explicitly highlighted as a potential contributor to the social repair of transatlantic slavery’s harmful legacies. Moreover, distributive justice should be explicitly emphasized as being necessary to realize the present-day and future rights of people suffering from the historical legacy of transatlantic slavery and not simply because the present situation is the result of historical injustice.

Social engineering the local for peace

Given the frequent failure of internationally established reconciliation tools, traditional conflict resolution mechanisms are increasingly integrated into transitional justice programmes in order to locally root peace. However, traditional justice mechanisms can be highly ambivalent; they can be, at the same time, inclusive and exclusionary, thus promoting peace or triggering new conflict. In Eastern Indonesia, where the author has conducted extensive field research, local actors took up these challenges and try to adapt local justice mechanisms so that they can cope with mass violence and the reintegration of conflict parties and society. Social engineering is promoted as one solution to the problem. This article looks at various conceptualisations and implications of social engineering – from a top-down authoritarian to a bottom-up participatory approach – and discusses how far this controversial concept and the deliberate adaption of local traditions to new challenges should be taken into account in future peace research and work as well as in anthropological debates.

دور العدالة الانتقالیة فى دعم البناء الدیمقراطى (مصر نموذجا)

د . محمد نور البصراتى کلية الدراسات الاقتصادية و العلوم السياسية جامعة بنى سويف ملخص : تعد الفترات الانتقالية من حياة الأمم والشعوب من اهم المراحل التاريخية أثناء عملية التغيير والتحول من النظام الشمولي الى النظام الديمقراطي التعددي ، خصوصا إذا شملت تلک التغيرات نظام الحکم والنهج السياسي والأيديولوجي لهذا النظام ، وکذلک نمط وسلوکيات العلاقات الاجتماعية والثقافية للمجتمع ، وفقدان العدالة هو احد العوامل الاساسية التي تهدد الإستقرار الإجتماعي والسلم الاهلي . وتعد الحالة المصرية بعد 25 يناير واحدة من أبرز الفترات الحاحا لتطبيق العدالة الانتقالية ، ولعل تنفيذ برامج العدالة الانتقالية من عدمه هو أحد عوامل التأثير فى الاستقرار السياسى . الکلمات المفتاحية : الفترة الإنتقالية - العدالة الانتقالية – الاستقرار السياسى . Abstract: Longer transition periods of nations and peoples lives of the most important historical stages during the process of change and transformation from a totalitarian regime to a pluralistic democratic system, especially if those changes included the regime's political and ideological approach to this system, as well as the style and behavior of social and cultural ties to the community, loss of justice is one of the key factors that threaten social stability and civil peace. The case of Egypt after the January 25 one of the most pressing periods for the application of transitional justice, and perhaps the implementation of transitional justice programs or not is one of influence in the political instability factors.

Evaluating the Evaluators: Transitional Justice and the Contest of Values

Despite an increase in scholarly efforts to evaluate transitional justice (TJ) programmes, there is little agreement over what TJ is, what effects it could be expected to have or how TJ mechanisms should be judged. This article contributes to the literature on TJ evaluation by showing how differences in understanding of the nature and value of the ‘justice’ in TJ affect what is evaluated and how findings are interpreted. The article parses the values inherent in TJ evaluations (retributive, restorative and transformative justice, valuable for intrinsic or instrumental reasons) in order to think through the ways in which different value orientations lead to different appraisals. A broad sample of literature on the TJ programme in Sierra Leone is analyzed according to the value orientations it tends towards. The analysis finds that evaluations of Sierra Leonean TJ can be found displaying each of the six value orientations, with no agreement about the success of the TJ programme from within orientations, let alone across them. Additionally, it is argued that scholars and researchers are rarely explicit about their orientations, and there is insufficient consideration of the political implications of different value positions for prescriptions for future TJ programmes.

Cultural heritage that heals: factoring in cultural heritage discourses in the Syrian peacebuilding process

Transitional justice is considered a building block of peacebuilding in post-conflict scenarios. Processes may include criminal justice mechanisms, reparation programmes, truth-seeking bodies and institutional reforms which seek to provide redress for victims of human rights atrocities. However, it is now widely acknowledged that the destruction of cultural heritage plays a significant role in and of itself in modern conflicts, affecting entire societies, as it is linked to the destruction of group identity, and can even prolong violence in the post-conflict period. The loss of cultural heritage has been devastating in the ongoing civil war in Syria, most notably in World Heritage sites. Despite this, discussions of potential peacebuilding methods and ideas for transitional justice programmes in Syria have failed to incorporate it. This paper argues that cultural heritage should be included in such work in its own right, and suggests ways this could be accomplished to encourage greater awareness of Syria’s cultural diversity, and the understanding and healing that can bring.

Using courts to build states: The competing spaces of citizenship in transitional justice programmes

This paper examines how establishing a new legal institution shapes understandings and practices of citizenship. It does so through a study of the creation of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBiH) between 2002 and 2014 and, in particular, its emerging jurisdiction over war crimes trials since 2006. International sponsors of this institution herald the establishment of the Court as an important step toward achieving justice for the crimes committed during the 1992–1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). But alongside its legal function, intervening agencies have emphasised an allied objective to use the Court to consolidate state structures and foster a civic sense of Bosnian citizenship. Using qualitative data, this paper argues that the creation of the CBiH illuminates a series of divergent understandings of citizenship. In particular, while the court seeks to convey a concept of liberal democratic citizenship, this is only achieved through the enrolment of civil society actors operating across BiH territory. Rather than heralding a series of ‘grassroots’ alternatives to official scripts, these social agents see the value of a universal understanding of justice structured around equality and rights, but often failed to see this expressed in the activities of the Court. The paper concludes by reflecting on the relationship between law and citizenship, where the imagined sense of universal jurisdiction is undermined by social concerns relating to the barriers that prevent access to justice.

Reconstructing ‘Traditional’ Justice from the outside in: Transitional Justice in Aceh and East Timor

Transitional justice programmes in post-conflict Aceh, Indonesia, and East Timor are often described as acts of bottom-up reconciliation, highlighting both the community focus of the programmes and the inclusion of indigenous justice practices (adat). Traditionally resonant forms of transitional justice are lauded over internationally orchestrated programmes for their presumed legitimacy and efficacy in promoting peacebuilding and reconciliation. This framing ignores the substantial and largely unrecognised role played by external actors in the revitalisation, reconstruction, and in some cases implementation of traditional practices in the transitional justice and peacebuilding programmes in Aceh and East Timor. Moreover, although the use of traditional practices was supposed to improve the effectiveness of the programmes, the reconstruction of ‘tradition’ by external actors created some new legitimacy and implementation problems. The cases highlight how the instrumentalisation of traditional practices in transitional justice programmes may solve some post-conflict dilemmas but create others.

Lustration, Transitional Justice, and Social Trust in Post-Communist Countries. Repairing or Wresting the Ties that Bind?

Interpersonal trust in post-communist societies is particularly low, and is often cited as an impediment to democratic consolidation. One way in which countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have tried to build trust is through transitional justice measures, particularly lustration or vetting policies. There is a direct relationship postulated between lustration, transitional justice, and social trust building. This paper tests this assumption by examining the impact of both targeted lustration and broader transitional justice programmes on social trust. The study finds there is a divergent impact of lustration on trust, both building particularised trust in social institutions and undermining generalised interpersonal trust.

Road to Impunity: The Absence of Transitional Justice Programs in Spain

This article analyzes the ongoing process of recovering Spain’s historical memory and building a transitional justice agenda to end the impunity of crimes against humanity committed during the Francoist dictatorship. Over thirty years after the transition to democracy, based on an agreement to silence and forget, a social movement that challenges the narrative of successful democratization has interrupted Spain’s political landscape. Victim associations, relatives, and citizens who support the recovery of historical memory have generated a debate about how to deal with the dictatorial past. In 2007, the Spanish Parliament passed the Historical Memory Act to recognize and enhance victims’ rights. However, victims and victim associations criticized the Act severely due to the absence of mechanisms that guarantee the implementation of a transitional justice agenda, including a failure to investigate the past or create a truth commission. In the wake of a 2012 Spanish Supreme Court decision, which asserts that it is legally impossible to conduct a judicial investigation into the crimes committed during the Francoist dictatorship, it appears that Spain is now further than ever from achieving this goal.

The Hidden Face of Justice: Fairness, Discrimination and Distribution in Transitional Justice Processes

AbstractThis article contributes to the literature on the impact of transitional justice measures using behavioral evidence from experiments. We argue that there is a distributional dilemma at the heart of transitional justice programs, given that the State must allocate goods and services both to victims and excombatants. Individual and social preferences over these processes matter, given that they are likely to scale up to undermine or increase public support for transitional justice programs. We offer evidence from the Colombian case, to show what we call the hidden face of justice effect, which occurs when in the transition from war to peace distributional dilemmas arise and generate a social sanction function that creates negative incentives that can affect the achievement of reintegration of ex-combatants and jeopardizes the maintenance of peace. In order to explore the microfoundations that underlie the differences between allocations to victims and ex-combatants, we use data from field experiments and find that ex-combatants expect lower transfers from public officers and citizens and indeed receive lower transfers, if compared to the victims and the control groups included in the study, despite the fact that third-party observers have the power to punish senders when making offers seen by the third-party as unfair.

Must Our Communities Bleed to Receive Social Services? Development projects and collective reparations schemes in colombia

The provision of social services in protracted conflicts, such as the Colombian conflict, is scarce and sometimes non-existent. Collective reparations are normally composed of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation and guarantees of no repetition. They constitute what normally would encompass development projects and can provide basic social services in contexts of peace and stability with additional symbolic and psychosocial elements. After more than five decades of conflict in Colombia, it seems that significant political will for transitional justice programmes — and in particular, reparations programmes — has emerged with the 2010 election of President Juan Manuel Santos and the ratification of the 2011 Victim's Law. In 2007, a pilot project of collective reparations programmes was initiated with the support of international development agencies. This paper uses data collected from these pilot projects to demonstrate the complexity of introducing development projects as a form of reparations in conflict-affected communities. It also questions whether it is good policy to require communities to have to ‘bleed first’ to receive basic social services under the auspices of collective reparations and explores the possible problems involved in implementing collective reparations programmes without a comprehensive development policy in post-conflict contexts.

The Hidden Face of Justice: Fairness, Discrimination and Distribution in Transitional Justice Processes

This article contributes to the literature on the impact of transitional justice measures using microfoundational evidence from experiments. We argue that there is a distributional dilemma at the heart of transitional justice programs, given that the State must allocate goods and services both to victims and ex-combatants. Individual and social preferences over these processes matter, given that they are likely to scale up to undermine or increase public support for transitional justice programs. We offer evidence from the Colombian case, to show what we call the hidden face of justice effect, which occurs when in the transition from war to peace distributional dilemmas arise and generate a social sanction function that creates negative incentives that can affect the achievement of reintegration of ex-combatants and jeopardizes the maintenance of peace. In order to explore the microfoundations that underlie the differences between allocations to victims and ex-combatants, we use a database built by Cardenas et. al (2008) and find that ex-combatants expect lower transfers from public officers and indeed receive lower transfers, if compared to the victims and the control groups included in the study, despite the fact that third-party observers have the power to punish senders when making offers seen by the third-party as unfair.

Perceptions of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal among Cambodians

Cambodia has established a special tribunal to try former Khmer Rouge cadres. For such a transitional justice programme, local ownership is deemed to be crucial. This article assesses public perceptions of the tribunal by analysing interactions between local participants and tribunal officials in public forums held by a local non-governmental organization (NGO). In doing so, it identifies sound reasons for Cambodians' pervasive indifference, as indicated in preceding surveys. The article has implications for the ownership of transitional justice programmes, suggesting that such nationwide forums must be recognized as a unique device for eliciting local perceptions, because they differ from traditional mainstream survey methods.

The Hidden Face of Justice: Fairness, Discrimination and Distribution in Transitional Justice Processes

This article contributes to the literature on the impact of transitional justice measures using microfoundational evidence from experiments. We argue that there is a distributional dilemma at the heart of transitional justice programs, given that the State must allocate goods and services both to victims and ex-combatants. Individual and social preferences over these processes matter, given that they are likely to scale up to undermine or increase public support for transitional justice programs. We offer evidence from the Colombian case, to show what we call the hidden face of justice effect, which occurs when in the transition from war to peace distributional dilemmas arise and generate a social sanction function that creates negative incentives that can affect the achievement of reintegration of ex-combatants and jeopardizes the maintenance of peace. In order to explore the microfoundations that underlie the differences between allocations to victims and ex-combatants, we use a database built by Cardenas et. al (2008) and find that ex-combatants expect lower transfers from public officers and indeed receive lower transfers, if compared to the victims and the control groups included in the study, despite the fact that third-party observers have the power to punish senders when making offers seen by the third-party as unfair. Keywords: Transitional justice, fairness, field experiments, third-party punishment game