56 results

This policy brief presents recommendations for transitional vetting based on insights from research on vetting practice. It is meant to complement existing guidelines on vetting put forth by the United Nations and other international organizations. It defines vetting and the risks it ...

Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) have often been directly affected by the crimes truth commissions seek to expose, and have a major stake in the success of transitional justice processes, which can shape the stability of post-conflict communities as well as the prospec...

This paper explores the intersection between displacement and one particular mechanism of transitional justice—justice-sensitive security sector reform (JSSR). It aims to identify various ways in which JSSR can contribute to the protection of refugees and internally displaced persons ...

Transitional justice has for the most part not prioritized issues related to displaced persons. Transitional justice measures do, however, have a bearing on displaced persons’ interests and on efforts to resolve displacement, in particular with regard to durable solutions, which inclu...

While contemporary understandings of restitution have been shaped by international responses to displacement and are primarily humanitarian in nature, restitution has its conceptual roots in traditional rules governing remedies for breaches of international law and is related to trans...

Humanitarians, development agencies, human rights organizations, and peacebuilding actors are commonly drawn to the same flash points of conflict, human rights violations, and states in need of rebuilding. Operating in common country contexts leads to increased interactions between th...

Although transitional justice processes are intended to help heal and restore society after conflict or authoritarian rule, marginalized groups often struggle to make their voices heard. These groups include those who have been displaced by conflict and, within that category, those wh...

This paper examines the crime of forced displacement from the perspective of both international and national legal frameworks. The crime of forced displacement is a notion that comes from international law. Indeed, an international legal framework has developed with the instruments an...

Research Brief: Selected examples of Defence, Intelligence and Justice Investigative Reports into detention and interrogation practices.

Examples of pardons in international jurisprudence, including Inter-American Court and Commission, European Court of Human Rights, UN Treaty Bodies, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Case studies on the use of pardons in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Peru, and South Africa.

Demobilization was first initiated in Cambodia in 1992, but there have been few attempts to link disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) processes to transitional justice measures. The government's overriding consideration has been the preservation of stability, narrowly i...

ICTJ provides an overview of various United States Commissions of Inquiry. This publication includes briefs on the Senate and House Committee Investigations of the Palmer Raids in 1920, the Senator Frank Church Committee in 1975, a commission into wartime relocation and internment of ...

States have the obligation to prevent human rights violations, investigate them, identify and punish their intellectual authors and accessories after the fact, and may not invoke existing provisions of domestic law to avoid complying with their obligations under international law. ...

ICTJ provides an overview of investigative reports into detention and interrogation practices by the U.S. government. The purpose of this brief is to provide a sampling of reports to survey the ways in which these have been commissioned, what they have covered, and how they relate to ...

This research brief provides case studies on the use of pardons in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Peru and South Africa following periods of mass abuse, and highlights subsequent political and civil society action to overcome impunity exacerbated by pardons and amnesties.

This paper explores how enforcement of international criminal law currently addresses socioeconomic and environmental crimes. It specifically examines current efforts to promote accountability for: (1) environmental war crimes and (2) property crimes and expropriation. The paper then ...

The term "civil society" is used by both the transitional justice and the development communities, often in a positive light: transitional justice measures are often said to contribute to strengthening civil society, and at the same time, to some extent, to depend on it; similarly, de...

This paper examines the links between education and transitional justice initiatives in contexts affected by conflict. It argues that conceptually there can be meaningful mutual reinforcement between the educational goal of participation and the transitional justice goals of recogniti...

This paper examines linkages between transitional justice processes and the broader issue of land tenure reform in countries with a long and complex history of property dispossession or where land has been a root cause of conflict. It is argued that greater coordination between transi...

Natural resources are a natural connecting point for postconflict development and transitional justice. Understanding the specific role of natural resources in the maintenance of authoritarian regimes and the facilitation of armed conflicts is central to transitional justice's aim of ...

In response to past human rights violations, a variety of measures have been developed, including prosecutions at both international and domestic levels, truth commissions, and reparations for victims. All these options need strong institutions. In postconflict and post-authoritarian ...

This paper maps out some of the links between transitional justice, SSR, and development. It is argued here that SSR and transitional justice can be understood to complement each other in ways that have received little attention so far, and that bringing in a substantive and direct fo...

Reparations and development are generally conceptualized and approached independently, but for survivors and victims the demand for both often arises simultaneously. In practice, reparations and development are linked in specific ways. This paper analyzes these links in the context of...

Contemporary societies find it very difficult to bring about qualitative and systemic changes. This affects development and transitional justice processes in similar ways, for both practices seek to bring about precisely such changes; the shared challenge is a link between the two fie...

Authoritarian regimes frequently leave in their wake a series of negative legacies that have not received sufficient attention in the literature on transitions, and even less by transitional justice measures. This paper examines the political economy of transitions from authoritariani...

Development theory and practice to date has not engaged extensively with transitional justice. This paper explores tentative pathways to conceive of how development and transitional justice practices connect-from a development practitioner's point of view.

This paper makes explicit some of the connections between transitional justice and development, two sprawling fields characterized by fuzzy conceptual borders and by both internal and external dissent. Taking seriously the idea of connecting, however, also means preserving the integri...

Trials re-enact periods of violence and state repression in order to submit them to authoritative judgment. The legal judgment is, however, only one aspect of such trials, which have broader educational and transformative goals. The question posed in this paper is whether or not trial...

International and hybrid jurisdictions have been created in response to the commission of heinous international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, including mass rape. This article shows that, by their legal definitions, genocide and crimes against humanity are ...

After periods of extended political conflict and of repression or state terrorism, there is an active political struggle about the meaning of what occurred. This paper illustrates some processes through which silenced or hidden ethnic, cultural or gender dimensions come to light durin...

The focus of this paper is on initiatives of DDR, SSR, and transitional justice as they relate in peacebuilding contexts. This paper considers the connection between the three types of initiatives: first, by exploring the relationship between DDR and transitional justice; second, by e...

Local justice is sometimes presented as an alternative to or substitute for other measures of transitional justice, often due to political, cultural, or practical considerations. This chapter argues that local justice addresses the (comparatively neglected) reintegration aspect of DDR...

Little has been written about the relationship between transitional justice measures and DDR programs with respect to child ex-combatants. We argue that the primary avenue through which transitional justice measures may positively affect the reintegration of former child combatants is...

This chapter examines the largely overlooked relationship between female ex-combatants, DDR, and transitional justice, with a particular focus on truth commissions. The potential of truth commissions to recognize women’s multiple and contradictory roles during armed conflict and to pu...

The general aim of this paper is to construct an argument about the advisability of drawing links between disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and reparations programs, but not just because this is better from the standpoint of justice. It can be argued that the securi...

Generally, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs and truth commissions have operated independently of one another. This has resulted in missed opportunities for strengthening DDR and truth commissions. DDR’s reintegration aims may be furthered by increased trut...

Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs and prosecutions of international crimes have become prominent features in the landscape of postconflict states. Some tension between them is inherent. Nonetheless, there is compatibility in the larger, long-term goals of D...

This paper’s principal aim is to provide a cogent analytical framework on the range of possible or ideal relationships between DDR programs and amnesties. It assesses whether and how amnesties can serve to maximize the effectiveness of a DDR program, while doing the least harm possibl...

Essential among South Africa's transition programs was a process to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate ex-combatants and to create a new defense force integrating the armed forces of opposing parties into a united military structure. Yet, DDR remained largely independent from other t...

In Sierra Leone, the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) process and transitional justice initiatives occurred in temporal proximity. Disarmament and demobilization were largely successful in Sierra Leone. Some research suggests, however, that accountability measures ...

While Rwanda has gone further than any other post-conflict state in prosecuting lower-level perpetrators for mass atrocity, transitional justice mechanisms were deliberately kept separate from the DDR program. On one hand, DDR largely succeeded despite a firm policy against amnesty. O...

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...