Tasked with producing the most innovative work in the field, the ICTJ Research Unit addresses important gaps in scholarship and provides comparative analysis of transitional justice measures and the difficult contexts in which they take place to ICTJ staff and to practitioners worldwide.
The field of transitional justice covers a range of disciplines, including law, public policy, forensics, economics, history, psychology, and the arts. The Research Unit works to develop a rich understanding of the field as a whole, and to identify issues that merit more in-depth research and analysis.
Collaborating with colleagues around the world, the unit's projects provide both empirical analysis as well as normative guidance for decision making. Indeed, one goal of all its projects is to build policymakers' and practitioners' capacity to confront the difficult choices they will face in designing measures of redress for mass atrocity.
Policymakers operate in a complex and dynamic environment without access to perfect information. To make sound judgments that have lasting effects, they require more than empirical research alone. They need the tools that only normative research can provide: the identification of competing priorities and the development of reasoning for making choices among them.
The Center also produces a range of shorter publications targeted at broader audiences including practitioners, policymakers, academics, and others engaged with the field of transitional justice. The ICTJ's Case Studies provide brief descriptions of transitional justice institutions around the world or an overview of justice initiatives in a particular country. Occasional Papers provide in-depth comparative analysis of specific transitional justice initiatives. See the Publications page for more details and downloadable versions of these and other documents. Hard copies are available upon email request to info@ictj.org.
(Updated June 2008)
