Resource Library

In situations of large scale violence and repression, reparations are best conceptualized as rights-based political projects aimed at giving victims due recognition and at enhancing civic trust both among citizens and between citizens and state institutions. This paper explores, in th...

Truth commissions can provide a stage for a potentially powerful encounter with the past (and present) at the level of public discourse. While their capacity to effect transformation in societies marked by patterns of identity-related marginalization and exclusion is limited (and the ...

The framework of transitional justice, originally devised to facilitate reconciliation in countries undergoing transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, is increasingly used to respond to certain types of human rights violations against indigenous peoples -- even in cases where ...

Within education, history may be the discipline that is most inherently conservative, as it has traditionally been the venue in which group cohesion and patriotism have been inculcated. In deeply divided societies, particularly after identity-based conflicts, history is a particularly...

In societies scarred by ethnic animosity or religious intolerance, one goal of transitional justice is to help reshape identities, and to strengthen a sense of shared identity related to common membership in the national political community. This nation-building function of transition...

Many of the situations that transitional justice has been called upon to address involve wholesale attacks on minority communities. MIP rights may be -- and in some cases have been -- articulated to strengthen claims for transitional justice, and produce outcomes in transitional justi...

In societies split dysfunctionally and violently along evident identity fault lines, the challenge of guaranteeing security requires not piecemeal reform of police and/or military organizations, but a holistic, "whole of governance" approach. How different identities are recognized an...

The social dynamics of ethnic identities is a huge subject. This article narrows the issue by looking specifically at ethnic conflict. It surveys for a transitional justice audience the key factors driving ethnic conflict, and describes some of the more well-known methods of addressin...

There was no formal relationship between Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DDRR) processes and transitional justice initiatives in Liberia. DDRR was near completion by the time the TRC began operations. This sequencing of the DDRR program prior to the TRC ...

In El Salvador there was a complex relationship between peacemaking and democratization. The DDR and transitional justice initiatives were connected by the timetable for the implementation of the peace accords. Progress in DDR was dependent on the implementation of political reforms, ...