The Transitions of Transitional Justice: Mapping the Waves From Promise to Practice

Abstract

Transitional justice is facing a kind of inverted “paradox of success”: The less effective its mechanisms seem to be in their efforts to build democracy and peace, the more we are demanding from them. This article chronicles the intellectual evolution of the field and its current efforts to address what are perceived to be the conceptual shortcomings of the approach. In doing so, it shows that to overcome its perceived limitations, and measure more precisely the effectiveness of its mechanisms, scholars are looking outside the paradigm to address how transitional justice may be more successful and lasting in repairing and restoring states and societies wrought with violence and human rights abuses. In mapping out the “transitions” of transitional justice and contemporary efforts to move the field forward, I argue that to better understand its effectiveness, we need to examine its impact on not only the short-term tensions of addressing victims’ claims but also on the long-term goals of creating conditions that secure the peace and prosperity of peoples.

Notes

¹ This exercise is not meant to imply a strictly or neatly chronological set of transitions. Rather, its goal is to highlight the field's distinct conceptual moments; although they did happen in more or less temporal waves, some overlapping occurred, as some work either foreshadowed future concerns or referred to past preoccupations.

² Transitional justice mechanisms encompass a number of objectives, depending on what aspect of the past (or the future) each is designed to address. This includes the prosecution of perpetrators of the former regime or conflict through trials; the implementation of truth commissions to allow victims/survivors (and sometimes perpetrators) to testify about their experiences for a public account of past violence and human rights violations; establishing a reparations program for victims of past atrocities; and the building of memorials. Long-term projects may include the reform of the judicial sector, vetting laws preventing members affiliated with a former regime from holding office, among other plans.

³ In some cases, countries face regime change and conflict, and that, when I state “regime change or conflict,” I acknowledge that in some cases it could be both.

⁴ A few examples of transitional justice enacted while the conflict was/is ongoing include the following: The 1999 Peace Accord in Sierra Leone; The Ugandan Amnesty Act of 2000, and the International Criminal Court investigations in Northern Uganda in 2003; the Democratic Republic of Congo Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2002 and the ICC investigation in the DRC in 2004; the ICC's arrest warrant of Bashir in the Sudan in 2007.

⁵ I follow here Hampson et al.'s (2002) three subfields of human security: safety of peoples, sustainable development, and rule of law/promotion of human rights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauren Marie Balasco

Lauren Marie Balasco is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware (UD). The recipient of several awards, including the 2012 UD Dissertation Fellowship and the 2011 UD Teaching in Excellence Award, she conducted fieldwork in Peru and Colombia in the summer of 2012. She received certificates in public and private international law from The Hague Academy of International Law (The Hague, The Netherlands) in the summer of 2011. Her dissertation (Just Security or a Secure Justice? Mapping the Transitional Justice–Human Security Nexus) examines how transitional justice initiatives and mechanisms impact the work of human security actors in the development and sustainability of the human security agenda. Her work pertains to themes related to transitional justice, the International Criminal Court, and Latin America.