1,721,079 research outputs found
Localization ‘light’ : the travel and transformation of nonempowering human rights norms
No full textDivergent ambitions : bracketing the disruptive potential of transitional justice in Belgium
No full textThis chapter compares two attempts to apply transitional justice to Belgium: the special parliamentary commission established in 2020 to analyse Belgium’s colonial past in the Great Lakes region; and the earlier process of designing an educational programme for dealing with societal polarisation. The parliamentary commission was modelled on a truth commission, while the educational programme drew on experiences with using transitional justice tools in conflicted settings in the Global South. Where the first struggled with issues of representation and decoloniality, the second met with scepticism and rejection because transitional justice was understood to apply to the Global South. Inscribed in these responses to transitional justice were therefore the relationship between Belgium and others in the Global South. The chapter demonstrates that in consolidated democracies engaging in transitional justice processes may challenge the legitimacy of existing state institutions and their associated narratives
Concluding remarks
No full textThis chapter concludes the volume, drawing together its different theoretical and empirical chapters. It argues that there is merit in looking beyond paradigmatic transitional contexts, since such a focus allows transitional justice to become relevant for a variety of justice actors, enables a decolonisation of the field, and offers a new perspective on what can be expected of transitional justice. To make this argument, the chapter discusses five themes that surface in the empirical chapters describing when transitional justice travels to aparadigmatic cases: 1. Pluralism and the unsettled character of transitional justice. 2. The standardisation of localised justice initiatives. 3. Ongoing transitions. 4. Political will and legitimacy. 5. Bridging the divide between scholars and practitioners. These five themes help to understand the contemporary field of transitional justice as it has expanded from transitional to non-transitional, aparadigmatic contexts
Introduction : transitional justice in aparadigmatic contexts
Get PDFThis introduction provides the rationale and theoretical anchoring for the volume and its focus on aparadigmatic cases. It argues that practice and scholarship in paradigmatic transitional justice contexts built a field that conceptualises the state as a partner in the transition. However, due to the field’s expansion to aparadigmatic justice contexts, this assumption and its associated binary concepts cannot inform analysis. Instead, as demonstrated by the present volume, transitional justice in aparadigmatic contexts offers different intentions, responses, and experiences of transitional justice. Where the state is not a partner, it may ignore, refuse, resist, and fight, while giving way to other actors and justice articulations.
The chapter first conceptualises transitional justice as the potential for recognition, accountability, and disruption. The chapter then discusses the expansion and recent standardisation of the field, whereby transitional justice has become four specific types of mechanisms: trials, truth-telling, reparation, and institutional reform. Thereafter it analyses the problem of the state, particularly how the field has assumed a transitional state, a partnering state. The next section offers a typology of transitional justice contexts that cover both paradigmatic and aparadigmatic contexts and ranges from contexts of ongoing conflict to consolidated democracy in formerly imperial states. This range covers seven different types of transitional justice context organised on the basis of the status of their political authority. Lastly, it maps the volume’s chapters onto the typology and briefly introduces each of them
The struggle continues : socio-legal analysis of Maya Ixil victims-survivors’ trajectories of participation in transitional justice in Guatemala
No full textDespite the expansion of victim-centred approaches in transitional justice, the current literature has mostly focused on analysing the implications of victim participation in formal mechanisms. This approach has overlooked important venues, for instance, grassroots spaces where meaningful forms of participation unfold. In Guatemala, the victims-survivors of the Internal Armed Conflict (1960-1996) have mobilized in both formal and grassroots spaces to advance their justice demands. Based on an actor-oriented and trajectorial approach, the thesis analyses the experiences of participation of the victims-survivors of Cocop. This Maya Ixil community experienced one of the first massacres in the context of the scorched earth policies in the country. The findings of the qualitative, socio-legal case study shed light on the divergent – but interconnected – ways agency develops at the local level, with a particular focus on: (i) the mobilization of identities; (ii) the supportive role of civil society, and (iii) framing and transformation of justice demands
The temporality of transitional justice : victim-survivors' evolving perceptions, demands and identities in Chile's ongoing transition towards democracy
No full textWhen a social protest movement against social inequality and injustice erupted in Chile in 2019, soon connections were made with the history of dictatorship (1973-1990). These protests suggest that the transition towards democracy, initiated in 1990, is far from finished. The victim-survivors of human rights violations during the military regime have mobilized, organized and expressed themselves in different ways, both during the dictatorship and during the transition towards democracy. However, their perspectives have often been overlooked in academic literature, and their voices often excluded from the shaping of the Chilean transitional justice process. This thesis focuses on the victim-survivors of the dictatorship, their experiences with the Chilean transitional justice process and the evolution of their perceptions, demands and identities. Through an analytical lens grounded in temporality, the thesis pays particular attention to the role of time and temporality
Countering erasure and invisibilisation : the potential of literature to open up the justice imagination in the Syrian context
No full textTransitional justice as communicative and deliberative process : a multi-method exploration at the intersection of expressivism, participation and outreach
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Universal jurisdiction : the unthinkable becomes thinkable (Podcast)
No full textBringing perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocide to justice is a complex task, and it tends to be extremely difficult to find courts willing to prosecute perpetrators within the territories where crimes have been committed.
However, when domestic trials or referrals to an international court are not possible, universal jurisdiction offers a way to prosecute perpetrators of these crimes in other states.
Universal jurisdiction has thus made the unthinkable thinkable: allowing for the prosecution of internationally recognized crimes beyond the borders where they took place.
In this episode, we take as a starting point the cases currently taking place in Germany against former officials of the Syrian regime.
We talk to Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Thijs Bouwknegt about the meaning, impact, and challenges of trials taking place under universal jurisdiction.
What can the courts actually do in such complex cases and what is the role of international solidarity in this story? What is the impact of such international efforts on both victims’ expectations and local justice efforts?
Naomi Roht-Arriaza is Professor of Law at The University of California Hastings College of the Law. She is the author of the impactful publication The Pinochet Effect: transitional justice in the age of human rights
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