Transitional Justice Research Articles

Restitution versus repatriation: Terminology and concepts matter.

Through museum collecting practice, the deceased, possessions, plants and animals were turned into objects, removed from their communities and places of origin, and were segregated and divided into museum classificatory systems. In the decolonial work of embarking upon purposeful and proactive acts of return, the terms "repatriation" and "restitution" have often been used interchangeably. To assess the terminological differences between repatriation and restitution. Here, we critically discuss the politics of these terms and present an argument for restitution as restitutionary work. Repatriation refers to the legal, administrative and logistical matters of returning across national borders. However, restitution is a preferred concept highlighting deeper meanings of return to the proper owner, with restitutionary work being time-consuming, emotional, often painful, enriching acts of restoration, and transitional justice. Restitution is about the embodiment and empowerment of choice over all aspects of the return. Here, we argue that terminology matters. While restitution may involve repatriation, repatriation is not a substitute for acts of restoration embodied in restitutionary work.

From the Ashes: Guarantees of Non-Recurrence for Destruction of Cultural Heritage

Because cultural heritage is a significant aspect of identity, it is often targeted during conflict or periods of repression. The danger may diminish with peace or transition, but it does not evaporate. Heritage is inherently contentious post bellum, so communities fear for the ongoing safety of their heritage, either because conflict might recur or because past patterns of cultural chauvinism or neglect might be repeated. The material integrity of heritage has gradually become a matter of concern for transitional justice. It has long been a maxim of transitional justice that dealing with the past implies preventing in the future. There is a need for regulatory schema and administrative structures serving the goal of preserving and protecting the tangible cultural riches of the state and/or communities of origin from the lingering threats that the politics of power might again be played out over heritage. Guarantees of non-recurrence (GNR) offer both an ethos and a framework in which to prioritize and think through this work of protection, conservation, and safeguarding. This article argues that the World Heritage Convention, notwithstanding its circumscribed emphasis on material and places of outstanding universal value, is nevertheless applicable to all heritage to which a GNR might be attached and provides an achievable “good enough” practice model, provided there is a threshold level of domestic political will.

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.

How Does Differential Public Participation Influence Outcome Justice in Energy Transitions? Evidence from a Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Project in China

A comprehensive understanding of public participation is critical for delivering justice in the energy transition. Waste-to-energy (WTE) is a practical approach toward sustainable energy transitions, which may threaten the realization of justice. Previous studies on WTE facilities have mostly discussed the siting stage under the environmental impact assessment (EIA) framework, and few have focused on whether public participation differs when different types of pollution occur. In this paper, we take a WTE project in Kunming, China as an example and, based on semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, explore the influence of differential public participation. The findings indicate that residents were more sensitive when faced with obvious pollution, which became the dominant factor in participation; meanwhile, they were inactively engaged in hidden pollution. Lower levels of health participation partly affect the realization of outcome justice. The shift from procedural justice to outcome justice is not inevitable and is subject to many factors. From an activism perspective, different perceptions of pollution risks and constraints on activities contribute to this state. We call for the government to complete the relevant engagement design in WTE projects and improve citizens’ awareness to achieve better environmental justice.

Climate justice and territory

AbstractThe territorial impacts of climate change will affect millions. This will happen not only as a direct consequence of climate change, but also because of policies for mitigating it—for example, through the installation of large wind and solar farms, the conservation of land in its role as carbon sink, and the extraction of materials needed for renewable energy technologies. In this article, we offer an overview of the justice‐related issues that these impacts create. The literature on climate justice and territory is vast and spans a range of disciplines, so we limit our discussion to a specific understanding of territory and a specific understanding of injustice that arises from its loss. We understand territory as a normative concept that describes a place under some agent's jurisdiction, where the agent is a politically organized collective and where the jurisdictional rights over that place secure a relevant degree of self‐determination for that collective. Accordingly, we consider that the main injustice connected to the loss of territory due to climate change is the loss or undermining of the ability to exercise the collective right to self‐determination, which requires some control over the place. This can happen if a territorial agent literally loses the ground where to stand as a direct effect of climate change, raising issues of justice in relocation; or if their place changes due to mitigation policies, affecting their use and understanding of territory, raising issues of justice in energy transition. In concluding, we point to topics for future research.This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Human Rights Policy and Governance > Governing Climate Change in Communities, Cities, and Regions

Transitional justice research in the digital age: Western Balkans results

In the rapidly evolving technological landscape, the digitization of the justice system in Albania holds tremendous potential for increasing efficiency and effectiveness. This study aims to comprehensively analyse and evaluate the implementation of digital technologies in Albania’s judicial system. Using analysis and synthesis, historicism, and hermeneutic methods, the study explores the concept of an information society and delves into the historical development of information technology in the Western Balkan region. It reveals that while the telecommunications infrastructure in these countries still requires improvement, the integration of information technology can optimize court processes, reduce resolution times, and enhance overall efficiency. By enabling audio-visual recording and online broadcasting of court sessions, the judicial process becomes more accessible and transparent for citizens. Moreover, the study uncovers the prevalence of challenges that hinder democratic performance in the Western Balkan countries, particularly within the judiciary. However, the introduction of digital technologies fosters an objective and transparent environment, mitigating the challenges and potential risks of corruption. The study also examines the implementation of digital documents and electronic digital signatures, a crucial step in the digitization of transitional justice. The use of digitally signed electronic documents offers numerous advantages, including time savings, accurate information retrieval, convenience, cost-effectiveness, control, and ease of use. Additionally, the study emphasizes the importance of digital archives for transparency and accountability, as well as the need to respect privacy and uphold citizens’ constitutional rights related to information and access. The practical significance of this study lies in its potential to inform the development of a program aimed at optimizing and improving the digital technology system within the judicial systems of the Western Balkan countries, with a special focus on Albania

Transitional justice from above and below: exploring the potential glocalising role of non-governmental organisations through a Northern Ireland case study

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have the potential to play a unique local-to-global role – ‘glocalisation’ – as intermediaries to international human rights bodies. NGOs are also significant actors in transitional justice societies and have the potential to make a positive contribution by linking local and global dimensions of transitional justice. Moving beyond analysis of legal transitional justice responses through domestic and regional courts and the United Nations (UN) treaty body individual complaints, this article calls for consideration of the role NGOs can play in transitional justice when they connect to quasi-judicial and political UN human rights bodies through state reporting mechanisms. As the work of these bodies is quite reliant on NGO expertise, particularly local NGOs, the article examines Northern Ireland NGO engagement with UN state reporting mechanisms regarding transitional justice. The article concludes that, while the distinction between the state-centric review at the UN level and grassroots activities at a local level is ultimately a false dichotomy, this divide seems to be operating in practice in the case of Northern Ireland. We make a distinction between rights-focused and reconciliation-focused NGOs and find that reconciliation-focused NGOs in particular are largely absent from international reporting frameworks. We argue that NGOs have the potential to play a unique local-to-global role, ‘glocalisation’, but this only works if local NGOs are enabled and encouraged to engage at a global level. Hence, we recommend that, where possible, local NGOs must be involved in both grassroots activities and international monitoring via the UN in order to exploit their glocalising potential.

A new agenda for a consolidated field of studies: New and old themes of memory studies in Latin America1

Latin America is a very fertile region for memory studies, as evidenced by the publications that range from the founding works of Elizabeth Jelin to the most recent compilation works. It is important to recognize that this consolidated field of studies has traditionally revolved around victimization processes and, more recently, transitional justice. However, it is also a scenario for the renewal of memory studies, in tune with contemporary global debates such as (1) the new generations and post-memory; (2) the redefinition of the role of the state as guarantor of official and public memories and, added to this; (3) the new place (geographical, institutional) occupied by the citizenry. Based on an assessment that recovers both the founding studies in Latin America, as well as the main contributions of research on memory and violence (with emphasis on work on transitional justice, exile and new generations), here we identify the new lines of research that are being privileged by memory studies in the region, this in order to draw a new research agenda for the field, which registers both the renewal of traditional themes (e.g. systematic investigations on the engagements of the researchers regarding issues such as transitional processes, and violence against marginalized or repressed groups; or the need to reintroduce the field of corporeity to think about issues such as gender, violence, exile) and the emergence of new problems of urgent research (the field of crises and uncertainty).

Rule of Law Backsliding and Memory Politics in Hungary

Introduction of the institutional framework of constitutional democracy and transitional justice in Hungary – Liberal constitutionalism as a victim of the authoritarian efforts of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party after the 2010 parliamentary elections – The legal governance of history contributing to the backsliding of democracy and the rule of law – Use of memory politics for the newly established authoritarian regime’s own political purposes – Transitional justice measures to help reconcile society and consolidate democracy – The current Hungarian government’s attitude towards public discussion of history

Passado e presente em 2014 As disputas públicas das memórias da ditadura e da redemocratização no Brasil e em Portugal

Abstract Despite notable progress in studies on transitional justice, insufficient attention has been directed toward the disputes on the matter that unfold within the press in the different countries that are faced with dictatorial pasts and conflictual political transitions. Similarly, the extensive body of work on democratization processes in Portugal and Brazil shows a remarkable absence of comparative studies contrasting these two cases. This article aims to address these gaps through a comparative analysis of public disputes over memories of the transition that took place in the Portuguese and Brazilian press. We have chosen to examine the pivotal year of 2014, a historical moment marked by heightened political crises in both countries, coinciding with the commemoration of the forty-year anniversary of the April Revolution and the fifty-year anniversary of the civil-military coup of 1964. By analysing prominent media outlets during that “hot” year (Público, Diário de Notícias, and Expresso in Portugal; Folha de São Paulo, O Globo, and O Estado de São Paulo in Brazil), we seek to elucidate the role the press played in memory disputes, especially by endorsing certain narratives about the dictatorships and the redemocratization processes in these two countries.

After Authoritarianism: Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability. By Monika Nalepa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 300p. $105.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

After Authoritarianism: Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability. By Monika Nalepa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 300p. $105.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

Opportunities for Imposing Carbon Tax Through the Aceh Qanun in the Perspective of Inter-generational Justice

The Indonesian government’s policy in responding to the energy transition opens opportunities for local government participation to mitigate the energy transition and adapt to climate change. The Government of Aceh, with exceptional autonomy, made a breakthrough by paying attention to the impact of managing Oil and Gas Natural Resources through a carbon tax. This article analyses the perspective of intra-generational justice in the energy transition faced with special autonomy and looks for manifestations of participation through regional autonomy gaps. Localizing carbon taxes only from an economic perspective is far from benefiting the next generation. When examined, it is the key to the principle of sustainability to reduce the impact of oil and gas natural resources production in Aceh. The polycentric policy model between the government and local governments has a strategic role by taking advantage of various policies and reducing the impact of existing policies.

Thinking methodologies with textiles, thinking textiles as methodologies in the context of transitional justice

In this paper, we examine the methodological possibilities of working with personal textile objects, such as clothes in need of mending, beloved personal blankets, and knotted rag dolls. Our focus is on a transdisciplinary project that sought to collectively explore how the bodies of professionals working for the Colombian Transitional Justice System are affected when engaging with narratives of war and conflict. We contend that textile making in this context serves a dual methodological purpose when facilitating spaces of careful research. Firstly, this material practice enables participants to pause and immerse themselves in their own experiences, something that in turn is generative of personal reflections. Secondly, the created objects become appreciation devices capable of documenting and eliciting memories that continually engage participants and researchers in new inquiries. Consequently, this paper contributes to the understanding of object-oriented methodologies as inherently relational and situated. Moreover, it aims to comprehend textile making practices as capable of unfolding care as a research practice.

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.

The Complementarity Paradigm: Tracing the Transitional Justice Blueprint in the Inter-American System of Human Rights

ABSTRACT∞ The promotion of ‘home-grown’ approaches to transitional justice is a powerful trope animating the field, encouraging local ownership of transitional justice processes, and refusing ‘one size fits all’ formulas. I challenge this account by exploring how the obligations resulting from anti-impunity’s advent yield only one particular institutional design that seems compatible with obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights. This means that the state’s autonomy to institutionally design a transition is increasingly narrowed in the Inter-American System of Human Rights. I develop this argument by exploring how the right to truth is enforced, showing that the interaction between regional obligations and truth as a right yields a specific transitional institutional blueprint. In doing so, I unpack legal techniques that assist in framing as necessary a transitional justice model that is a contingent, and reckon with its implications.

Arsip sebagai kendali intelektualitas dalam proses produksi pengetahuan

Introduction. Archives are not only seen as a product but also as a process to produce knowledge particularly, through interdisciplinary collaborations in the era of postmodernisme. The postmodernism perspective may influence the interpretation of archives which leads to archival discourse. This study aims to investigate the postmodernism perspective of archives in the knowledge production process in a more impartial and democratic way.
 Data Collection Methods. This study used a qualitative approach through literature study.
 Results and Discussion. The postmodernism perspective has opened up new viewpoints on the role and function of archives in the knowledge production process for searching and reading archives in a more diverse manner. In this study, several discussed archives were related to human rights, community engagement, accountability, and power relations, as well as social and transitional justice. The postmodernism perspective of archives as intellectual control in the production of knowledge through interdisciplinary collaboration and as one of the sustainable international projects may establish intellectual networks between countries.
 Conclusion. The postmodernism perspective has provoked new ideas and expanded the discourse on archives needed in the development of the archival field. Archivists as well as historians play a new role as users of archives who have a responsibility in intellectual control to write democratic historical narratives.

Symboliczne wymiary tajwańskiego nacjonalizmu

THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSION OF TAIWANESE NATIONALISMA great majority of Taiwanese people declare themselves to be Taiwanese only (61% in 2022) or Taiwanese and also Chinese (additional 31%), which gives an impression of ethnic and national unity. However, the divisive factors of (sub) ethnic grouping, language diversity and historical consciousness are still present. Taiwanese nationalism, which in its civilian form is organized around present state of Republic of China (ROC) as opposed to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, ROC, although de facto an independent state is not de iure a Taiwanese state, as can be seen in its national symbolism. The paper analyses this enthosymbolical dimension of Taiwanese national identity, discussing four main symbolical spheres: the memory of the 2-28 Incident; memory and idealization of the Japanese colonial period; strong presence of local languages, used alongside the official northern mandarin standard; and finally, the presence of the Aborigine people and their cultures. All these spheres are important in Taiwan symbolical space, and their importance is further strengthened by the actions of the state (public commemorations, protecting the cultural relicts of Japanese period, removing the ones connected with authoritarian regime of Chiang Kai shek etc.). However, the author remains doubtful if they have enough emotional and symbolical power to unite Taiwanese in the face of the Chinese threat. Closely related question is the future effect of the recommendations of the report of the Commision of Transitional Justice about the monuments of the KMT period, whose fate is a strongly contested issue, and which needs further research.

After the Genocide: Proximity to Victims and Support for Punishing Ingroup Crimes

What explains divergent transitional justice preferences among political elites after genocide? We argue that elite preferences vary with their proximity to the victimized group. Individuals who know the victims personally and/or have witnessed violence against them may be more likely to support punishing the perpetrators, possibly because they experience collective guilt. We support this argument using an original biographical dataset on the members of the West German parliament, linking their location and experiences during the Third Reich to free roll-call votes on extending the statute of limitations for murder in 1965–69. We find that proximity to synagogues, particularly those attacked in November 1938, predicts support for extending the statute, conditional on party, state, mandate type, denomination, and a host of personal attributes. We also find significantly lower support for extending the statute among former NSDAP members. Our findings highlight the importance of bystander experiences in shaping support for retributive justice.

Voices in Silence

This paper explores the effects of hospitality rites and the co-creation of common spaces as a means to achieve transitional justice in Peru, 20 years after the 1980–⁠2000 internal armed conflict. It describes a tea ceremony in La Hoyada, a place used by the Army as a clandestine burial ground. A foreign act of hospitality breaks the temporality of the site; mindful actions create silence, and the voices of people are better heard. This work describes the development of an incipient methodology, an intimate language of presence, and how video recordings of participants’ testimonies captured the feelings arising in a one-time silent event.

Difficult Heritage in Southeastern Europe: Local and Transnational Entanglements in Memorializing Political Prisons after Socialism

Throughout Central and Eastern Europe, various governments supported the creation of memorial museums of political violence during state socialism. While much scholarly attention has been given to Hungary’s House of Terror and the Baltic museums of occupations, this article examines the contrasting situation in Southeastern Europe, where state actors were generally absent and which witnessed relatively belated and overwhelmingly bottom-up processes. The article analyses the particularity of political prisons as ‘difficult heritage’. It scrutinizes the commonalities and entanglements between the memorialization of political prisons in three Southeastern European countries marked by distinctive trajectories both during and after communism: Albania (Spaç), Romania (Sighet and Piteşti), and Croatia (Goli Otok). The article shows how in the absence of state-level policies to address transitional justice, activism surrounding difficult heritage memorialization has aimed to fill the gap. It also argues that the relationship between site memorialization in Southeastern Europe and the wider European models is doubly constitutive: first, the memorialization of Sighet in 1990s Romania borrowed approaches from Western European Holocaust memorialization, then shaped a European wide set of best practices; second, a wave of new memorial initiatives after 2010 in Southeastern Europe was connected to the Europeanization of memory and transnational engagements.