Transitional Justice Research Articles

Beyond Seeing and Listening: Children Born from Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT This essay discusses some points made by the three books under review regarding how children born of conflict-related sexual violence have not been seen and listened to by those working in the field of transitional justice. To this end, it explores some of the reasons behind this oversight, including generalized assumptions about their relationships with their mothers, families and communities. It also discusses some of the limitations of the current transitional justice framework to address the plight of these children. Finally, the essay emphasizes the importance of analyzing more deeply the particular context in which these children are embedded. To this end it draws from some of the frameworks presented in the three books under review, which allow for a more capacious comprehension of the situation of children born of conflict-related sexual violence.

Elite theory and politicization of negotiated settlement: challenges to peace durability in Colombia

ABSTRACT Ending civil conflict is difficult, particularly through negotiated settlements. The research finds that the durability of peace guaranteed through a negotiated settlement can be affected when the opposing elites politicize the concessions made with rebels. Through politicization, the space in societal acceptance of rebels in post-war negotiations can be used by the opposing elites to gain a political support base, thereby challenging the delicate power-sharing agreement. Further, the politicization of the deal remains a hindrance to the sequencing of Transitional Justice (TJ) goals making the society more polarized and pushing it to violence, as the transition from the civil war to peace needs compromise and calculated sequencing of goals of TJ.

Consuming the White Terror: Transmedia Adaptation and Franchise-Building of Detention

Abstract This article examines the Taiwanese video game Detention (Fanxiao 返校, 2017) and its namesake film and television series adaptations, each of which has achieved critical acclaim and commercial success. Despite the franchise’s preoccupation with the history of the White Terror, this article argues that the video game’s theme of “memory as remedy” – a crucial discourse in the quest for transitional justice in contemporary Taiwan – has been diluted rather than preserved in the process of transmedia adaptation and franchise-building. Through a close-playing of the game and close-readings of the film and TV series, I demonstrate that the transmedia development of Detention is not always unified and coordinated, but rather filled with contradictions and incongruities that lead to the displacement of historical trauma. These divergent narratives reveal how the White Terror remains contested terrain in contemporary Taiwan. Dominated by the managerial logic of media franchising, a confluence of social, political, and economic factors has made Detention a unique case for contemplating transmedia storytelling in the age of convergence culture.

The evidentiary potential of art after genocide

Documentary archives, human remains, and witness testimony are often critical to transitional justice court proceedings and peace-building projects after mass violence. But what happens when those forms of evidence are missing? Can art stand in for the dead? Considering the use of art in Vann Nath’s testimony in the trial of Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, in this paper, I argue that in the first case for the ECCC, Vann Nath’s art performed a similar role to that of human remains in other trials, providing evidence and proof of human rights violations including torture, cruel and inhuman treatment, arbitrary detention, and mass killing, while also activating affect (drawing on Hughes). As such, it provided a form of social proof, in a way similar to the human remains retained from the genocide and displayed across Cambodia. Both human remains and art draw on materiality and emotion as a means of proving violence. Positioning it as such prompts a reconsideration of the role of art in transitional justice: as well as being needed in cases where other visual evidence does not exist, art, with its ability to mobilize and communicate linguistically incommunicable affect, can be part of the evidentiary infrastructure in and of itself. Considering the place of art in trials after mass violence makes us rethink what evidence is and does. Ultimately, my argument is that to those who survive genocide or other mass violence social proof of atrocities, as provided by art, is as important as evidence deemed legally admissible to court.

Meaningful acknowledgement: how to evaluate acknowledgement in transitional justice interactions using deliberative reciprocity?

ABSTRACT Acknowledgment of wrongdoing is considered necessary for relationship transformation in processes of transitional justice. However, the concept has only been studied in the institutional and legal context. Its social and interpersonal dimensions at the micro level remain poorly understood. This article addresses this gap by studying interactions between ordinary citizens across ethnic lines in response to war crimes trials. The article uses deliberative reciprocity to create a novel typology to identify meaningful acknowledgement in 162 inter-ethnic exchanges derived from focus groups in four former Yugoslav countries. The study also identifies what triggers this ideal type and finds that the triggers are related to conversational changes in identity constructions and knowledge claims. But the triggers only occur when individuals also endorse each other’s views across ethnic lines. The article thus shows how relationships transform in inter-ethnic interactions, even when individuals hold differing views and arguments about transitional justice.

Declining Support for the 2016 Colombia Peace Accord: Colombian Attitudes Toward Peace and Transitional Justice

Declining Support for the 2016 Colombia Peace Accord: Colombian Attitudes Toward Peace and Transitional Justice

Unsettling forensics: novel forms of necro-governmentality and alternative knowledge practices in Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste

The integration of forensic knowledge and associated practices into a growing number of human rights and humanitarian investigations, as well as transitional justice processes has led some scholars to claim a “forensic turn.” This turn is marked by the rise of forensic practices as “necro-governmental” technologies that seek to deliver certainty to the living and to the state so that a new political order can be created, a new future ushered in (Rojas-Perez, 2017, p. 19). Yet is the forensic turn truly globalized? Focusing on the cases of Timor-Leste and Sri Lanka, this article probes how states and citizens in these post-conflict settings are attempting to manage the unsettling indeterminacies of dead and missing bodies largely without recourse to forensic expertise. These cases shed light on the novel forms of necro-governmentality and alternative modes of local knowledge production that emerge in settings where there is a relative absence of forensic expertise. They also show how the necro-governmental project of fixing the meanings and identities of the dead (forensic or otherwise) is always ongoing, never fully or finally complete. This is because the unsettling indeterminacies of missing and dead bodies allow those bodies to be drawn into intimate practices of care and mourning and more public political projects that can resist attempts to close off their meanings.

Punishing Individuals Who Complied with Intolerably Unjust ‘Laws’ in Predecessor Regimes

AbstractSuppose a ‘law’ required individuals to report neighbours of a certain race for extermination. If individuals complied with such a ‘law’ to avoid the penal sanction of a death sentence, should a tribunal involved in the process of transitional justice in a successor regime punish them? Radbruch suggests that intolerably unjust ‘laws’ are not legally valid. According to Radbruch's Formula, reporting the neighbour would not be justified by law. The logical implication of this Formula is that the act of reporting was, in substance, abetment to murder (or possibly, genocide). Yet, punishing individuals who complied with the purported ‘law’ in the predecessor regime seems unfair, particularly as some legal positivists would regard the law as valid. Individuals might have acted according to what they believed was law and under duress (out of fear of penal sanction for failure to comply) in the predecessor regime. I examine whether these are valid considerations in proceedings before a tribunal prosecuting individuals for acts done in compliance with intolerably unjust ‘laws’ in predecessor regimes. While the perceived unfairness might militate against acceptance of Radbruch's Formula, if the considerations are not valid, Radbruch's Formula is unobjectionable.

Transnational corporate counterinsurgency in the Colombian conflict and its legacies today

ABSTRACT This study challenges common-sense thinking on internal violent conflicts in two ways: that they are merely domestic, with limited influence from external actors; and that doing business in conflict-ridden places is detrimental to profits. Drawing on empirical research and theoretical lenses from critical security studies and the political ecology of counterinsurgency, the paper explores the transnational dimensions of Colombia’s violent conflict in relation to the extractive sector. Conceptualising two overall generations of counterinsurgency, the article shows how, during the conflict, several transnational corporations, especially those in the extractive and agro-industrial sector, not only established themselves in Colombia and expanded, they also developed their corporate security schemes. Given that energy projects were strategic targets in the guerrilla war, the protection of corporate infrastructure by the state was justified. The paper argues that the internal conflict not only facilitated corporate extractivism, it also provided innovative ways of ensuring corporate security. This ‘social warfare’ approach includes strategic efforts to win hearts and minds, which continue to be pursued today through practices known as ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR). The paper relates this to the current challenges to hold economic actors accountable in transitional justice.

Storytelling and Listening in Transitional Justice Processes: Addressing the Marginalisation of More-than-Human Worlds

This interdisciplinary article makes three important contributions to discussions about transitional justice and storytelling. First, it problematises the anthropocentric character of transitional justice and the concomitant narrow focus on human-centred stories. It underscores the need for more inclusive and multispecies ways of thinking about storytelling – as a deeply relational process – and what it looks and sounds like in transitional justice contexts. Second, the article focuses not just on storytelling but also on listening, which has received little attention within transitional justice research. It reflects on the significance of soundscape ecology and argues that learning to listen to and with our soundscapes is one way of ensuring that more-than-human worlds, ‘voices’ and experiences do not remain peripheral to transitional justice. Third, the article contributes to a larger decolonising imperative. By conceptualising storytelling and listening as inherently relational practices, it de-centres liberal individualism and gives prominence to Indigenous cosmologies.

Do apologies promote the reintegration of former combatants? Lessons from a video experiment in Colombia

Transitional justice practices frequently involve public apologies where former combatants confess their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness, with the underlying assumption that such displays facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants into society. However, little is known about the public response to ex-combatant apologies. In this article, we investigate the causal effect of an armed group apology on attitudes toward ex-combatant reintegration in Colombia. Our study builds on a novel experiment implemented in Meta, a conflict-ridden department of Colombia. The experiment entailed exposing a subset of participants to a video in which a former rebel group leader apologizes for violent acts committed by their armed group during the civil war. To examine the extent to which external actors influence the effectiveness of apologies, we incorporated third-party ‘encouragements to forgive’ (endorsements) in two additional treatment conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that, on average, participants do not exhibit higher reintegration attitudes when exposed to the apology, regardless of third-party endorsements. However, the absence of a treatment effect is not due to an indifference to the apology. In an exploratory heterogeneity analysis, we show that the apology induces negative effects on some indicators of reintegration attitudes among participants that did not support the peace agreement. This finding aligns with qualitative data gathered in a follow-up survey, which indicates that opponents of the peace agreement generally describe negative emotional responses to the FARC-EP apology. The results call for a reconsideration of unchallenged prescriptions of public apologies after conflict.

Perpetrators as Victims? Inclusivity and Proximity in Post-Genocide Cambodia and Rwanda

ABSTRACT In post-genocide Cambodia and Rwanda, low-level perpetrators often identify as victims of the genocidal regimes alongside those they tortured and killed. However, state and societal responses to these claims appear to have varied dramatically. In Cambodia, the government and civil society organizations seem to view former Khmer Rouge cadres’ claims to victim status as socially acceptable and politically useful, while in Rwanda, the government and civil society organizations have firmly rejected perpetrators’ efforts to claim space as victims. What accounts for these different societal responses in Cambodia and Rwanda? At present, there is ample literature on how authoritarian government actors in both contexts have shaped their nation’s post-genocide transitional justice responses to prevent future bloodshed, while simultaneously reinforcing their regimes’ sometimes tenuous political legitimacy. However, this article offers complementary insights by exploring two otherwise under-researched factors that we argue further inform these polar-opposite reactions to perpetrators’ claims to victim status: (1). post-genocide governments’ offers of inclusivity in defining who is part of each nation’s ideal post-genocide ingroup; and (2). the social proximity of perpetrators and their victims during and after the genocides. Our focus on inclusivity and social proximity related to the Cambodian and Rwandan genocide advances scholarly understandings of the various factors that shape government and social responses to perpetration in the aftermath of genocide internationally.

Attributing Responsibility to Big Tech for Mass Atrocity: Social Media and Transitional Justice

Big Tech companies such as Meta, the owner of Facebook, are increasingly accused of enabling human rights violations. The proliferation of toxic speech in their digital platforms has been in the background of recent episodes of mass atrocity, the most salient of which recently transpired in Myanmar and Ethiopia. The involvement of Big Tech companies in mass atrocity raises multiple normative and conceptual challenges. One is to properly conceptualize Meta’s responsibility for the circulation of toxic speech. On one view, endorsed by the corporation itself, Meta can be absolved from any significant share of responsibility for these atrocities because toxic speech is the speech of some (rogue) users, hosted but neither created nor endorsed by the company; if anything, Meta is responsible for failing to anticipate and swiftly remove that speech. I will argue that this view is misleading, as it misses the underlying forces crafting toxic speech. Meta’s business model relies on what one might call the algorithmic capture of attention, which it achieves by manipulating its users and by creating an environment in which manipulative practices of some users thrive over others. This fact alone turns the company into a co-creator of toxic speech rather than a mere conduit of the toxic speech of others. As a result, it is safe to claim that Meta bears significant causal responsibility and sufficient moral responsibility for the dissemination of toxic speech, such that it justifies its inclusion in transitional justice processes and grounds its moral obligation to act in ways that advance these processes.

Impunity in Nepal from a Social Protection Lens

This study aims to promote stakeholder solutions to the current state of affairs in Nepal, which has prevailed since the end of the armed conflict in 2006. The study argues that delayed justice in the cases of grave human rights violations that occurred during the armed conflict between the Maoist party and the Government of Nepal is closely associated with the accountability of the then-conflicting parties. The lack of the legislature’s engagement and the Government’s reluctance to address the recommendations of the Supreme Court on transitional justice-related instruments have prolonged the end of impunity and guaranteed social protection of the victims’ families. Upon reviewing the literature on human rights violations, this study concluded that accountability had been impeded by the fragmented conflicting parties, who ignored the victims' and their families’ concerns about justice and social protection. The Government, on the other hand, neglected truth seeking and therefore failed to ensure justice, including in the provision of reparations and standardised institutional reform. The current state of the country’s transitional justice law and unaccountability of state agencies cannot be improved without a collaborative approach and a consultative process with state, non-state actors, victims and their families, as well as the international community.

Revisiting forum shopping: navigating normative pluralism, navigating sentiments

People live their lives and experience the conflicts in which they are involved in the context of competing normative orders. But how do people navigate this normative pluralism? To understand this, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann’s model of ‘forum shopping’ and ‘shopping forums’, derived from an ethnographic analysis of conflict resolution, remains an indispensable starting point. Building on this approach, I argue that in order to understand the navigation of normative orders more broadly, it is important to bring the analysis of sentiments to the study of normative pluralism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the International Criminal Court’s transitional justice interventions in northern Uganda, I argue that when confronted with different international, national, religious, and indigenous normative options for dealing with mass violence, people navigate normative pluralism by creating, mobilising, maintaining, and transforming sentiments.

Transitional Justice in Colombia: A Systematic Literature Review

Transitional justice in Colombia has evolved, reflecting the political, social, and academic changes in the country. This study is a systematic review of the literature through articles indexed in Web of Science, applying the PRISMA protocol. Out of 3819 articles published in the last five years (2019-2024), 109 articles were selected following strict exclusion criteria. The methodology includes a quantitative analysis complemented with the visual analysis tool Posit PBC™ for bibliometric analysis in Biblioshyni. The study addresses the research question on the evolution of the main research interests in the field of Transitional Justice in Colombia. The results show that initially, analyses on transitional justice focused on documenting the atrocities of the armed conflict, with a focus on truth and reparation, grounding legal mechanisms such as the Justice and Peace Law of 2005; with the 2016 Peace Agreement, research expanded into more complex issues, including the interaction between transitional justice and development, and the importance of civil society and victim engagement. The inclusion of the gender perspective, particularly after the 2016 Peace Agreement, led to studies on how women and LGBTI+ communities were differentially affected by the conflict. In addition, recent research has focused on the comparison between the peace processes with the AUC and the FARC-EP, analyzing the differences in their transitional justice frameworks and the challenges of implementing these agreements in a context of persistent violence.

Amnesties as a means of encouraging transition and strengthening the application of IHL in Colombia: The case of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace

Abstract Bearing in mind that the peace process between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP) has been an important milestone for transitional justice, this article aims to share some of the good practices and achievements of this process, as well as the setbacks and challenges that could be avoided in future peace processes. The article will highlight relevant contributions from the Chamber for Amnesty or Pardon (CAP) such as impacting the resocialization of former FARC-EP members and developing international humanitarian law discussions in relation to war crimes and less serious crimes. Additionally, it will describe some of the main challenges faced by the CAP, such as the high number of applications for transitional benefits that it receives, the high number of proceedings that it supervises, and the security concerns arising from implementing a peace agreement in a country still in conflict.

Seeking balance: The role of Article 6(5) of Additional Protocol II in balancing justice and peace in transitions from armed conflict to peace

Abstract This article explores the role of Article 6(5) of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions in balancing justice and peace during transitions from armed conflict to peace. It argues that the provision, which encourages the granting of broad amnesties at the cessation of hostilities, requires a re-evaluation of the obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish under international law. By analyzing the legal context and scope of Article 6(5), as well as its application in transitional justice models such as in Colombia, the article highlights how the principle of peace can be prioritized alongside justice without undermining victims’ rights. The discussion critically addresses maximalist interpretations of justice, presenting a nuanced approach that foregrounds restorative justice and the importance of reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

Truth Telling and Reconciliation in the Pacific: Solomon Islands' Experience

Truth-telling was necessary as part of Solomon Islands’ reconciliation and peace-building process following the violent conflict between 1998 and 2003. When Solomon Islands gained constitutional independence from Great Britain in 1978, the architects of independence did not anticipate that the country would be embroiled in a violent conflict 20 years later. This conflict left the national economy in ruins, the nation-state on the verge of disintegration with law and order in disarray and an Australian-led Pacific Islands Forum regional intervention force was deployed in 2003. The Solomon Islands government later established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to address the causes of the conflict and establish sustainable peace. From 2010 to 2012, the TRC facilitated a process of truth-telling that was seen as important to secure reconciliation and peace. The truth-telling process focused on the plight of the victims and perpetrators with limited focus on traumas that were generated due to factors such as governance, socio-economic issues, land alienation and displacement. This article will discuss transitional justice by paying attention to the role of the TRC and the effects that it produced. Given this context, the conversations around truth-telling should recognise the intersection between the colonially prescribed state and Indigenous expressions of sovereignty defined through socio-cultural relationships and protocols.

Purging Disloyal Courts in Democratic Transitions and Judicial Preferences

ABSTRACT∞ In this article, I examine court-purging in democratic transitions through the lens of judicial preferences. Specifically, I address the debate on how court-purging during a democratic transition affects the likelihood of future court-purging. I argue that the prevailing assumption is one of static, sincere judicial preferences. In contrast, I explicitly recognize the role of dynamic judicial preferences and incentives. This recognition suggests that transitional court-purging could be minimal and cautious, while the broader judicial context may eventually achieve the same policy outcomes. The dynamic perspective is crucial for understanding past court-purging strategies and for informing the conceptual debate about the rule of law in transitional justice.