Based on original empirical research, this book explores retributive and gender justice, the potentials and limits of agency, and the correlation of transitional justice and social change through case studies of current dynamics in post-violence countries such Rwanda, South Africa, Cambodia, East Timor, Columbia, Chile and Germany.
Through two Colombian case studies, Sanne Weber identifies the ways in which conflict experiences are defined by structures of gender inequality, and how these could be transformed in the post-conflict context. The author reveals that current, apparently gender-sensitive, transitional justice (TJ) and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) laws and policies ultimately undermine rather than transform gender equality and, consequently, weaken the chances of achieving holistic and durable peace. To overcome this, Weber offers an innovative approach to TJ and DDR that places gendered citizenship as both the starting point and the continued driving force of post-conflict reconstruction.
This book examines how gendered agency emerges in peacebuilding contexts. It develops a feminist critique of the international peacebuilding interventions, through a study of transitional justice policies and practices implemented in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and local activists’ responses to official discourses surrounding them. Extending Nancy Fraser’s tripartite model of justice to peacebuilding contexts, the book also advances notions of recognition, redistribution and representation as crucial components of gender-just peace. It argues that recognising women as victims and survivors of conflict, achieving a gender-equitable distribution of material and symbolic resources, and enabling women to participate as agents of transitional justice processes, are all essential for transforming the structural inequalities that enable gender violence and discrimination to materialise before, during, and after conflict. This study establishes a new avenue of analysis for understanding responses and resistances to international peacebuilding, by offering a sustained engagement with feminist social and political theory.
Transitional justice is the way societies that have experienced civil conflict or authoritarian rule and widespread violations of human rights deal with the experience. With its roots in law, transitional justice as an area of study crosses various fields in the social sciences. This book is written with this multi- and inter-disciplinary dynamic of the field in mind. The book presents the broad scope of transitional justice studies through a focus on the theory, mechanisms and debates in the area, covering such topics as: The origin, context and development of transitional justice Victims, victimology and transitional justice Prosecutions for abuses and gross violations of human rights Truth commissions Transitional justice and local justice Gender, political economy and transitional justice Apology, reconciliation and the politics of memory Offering a discussion of the impact and outcomes of transitional justice, this approach provides valuable insight for those who seek both an introduction alongside relatively advanced engagement with the subject. Transitional Justice: Theories, Mechanisms and Debates is an important text for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students who take courses in transitional justice, human rights and criminal law, as well as a systematic reference text for researchers.
After periods of conflict and authoritarianism, educational institutions often need to be reformed or rebuilt. But in settings where education has been used to support repressive policies and human rights violations, or where conflict and abuses have resulted in lost educational opportunities, legacies of injustice may pose significant challenges to effective reform. Peacebuilding and development perspectives, which normally drive the reconstruction agenda, pay little attention to the violent past. Transitional Justice and Education: Learning Peace presents the findings of a research project of the International Center for Transitional Justice on the relationship between transitional justice and education in peacebuilding contexts. The book examines how transitional justice can shape the reform of education systems by ensuring programs are sensitive to the legacies of the past, how it can facilitate the reintegration of children and youth into society, and how education can engage younger generations in the work of transitional justice.
øThe concept of juridification refers to a diverse set of processes involving shifts towards more detailed legal regulation, regulations of new areas, and conflicts and problems increasingly being framed in legal and rights-oriented terms. This timely
When a person is not recognised as a citizen anywhere, they are typically referred to as ‘stateless’. This can give rise to challenges both for individuals and for the institutions that try to govern them. Statelessness, governance, and the problem of citizenship breaks from tradition by relocating the ‘problem’ to be addressed from one of statelessness to one of citizenship. It problematises the governance of citizenship – and the use of citizenship as a governance tool – and traces the ‘problem of citizenship’ from global and regional governance mechanisms to national and even individual levels. With contributions from activists, affected persons, artists, lawyers, academics, and national and international policy experts, this volume rejects the idea that statelessness and stateless persons are a problem. It argues that the reality of statelessness helps to uncover a more fundamental challenge: the problem of citizenship.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of women become victims of sexual violence in conflict zones around the world; in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, approximately 1,100 rapes are reported each month. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the causes, consequences and responses to sexual violence in contemporary armed conflict. It explores the function and effect of wartime sexual violence and examines the conditions that make women and girls most vulnerable to these acts both before, during and after conflict. To understand the motivations of the men (and occasionally women) who perpetrate this violence, the book analyzes the role played by systemic and situational factors such as patriarchy and militarized masculinity. Difficult questions of accountability are tackled; in particular, the case of child soldiers, who often suffer a double victimization when forced to commit sexual atrocities. The book concludes by looking at strategies of prevention and protection as well as new programs being set up on the ground to support the rehabilitation of survivors and their communities. Sexual violence in war has long been a taboo subject but, as this book shows, new and courageous steps are at last being taken Ð at both local and international level - to end what has been called the “greatest silence in history”.
What role do transitional justice processes play in determining the gender outcomes of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism? What is the impact of transitional justice processes on the human rights of women in states emerging from political violence? Gender Politics in Transitional Justice argues that human rights outcomes for women are determined in the space between international law and local gender politics. The book draws on feminist political science to reveal the key gender dynamics that shape the strategies of local women’s movements in their engagement with transitional justice, and the ultimate success of those strategies, termed ‘the local fit’. Also drawing on feminist doctrinal scholarship in international law, ‘the international frame’ examines the role of international law in defining harms against women in transitional justice and in determining the ‘from’ and ‘to’ of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism. This book locates evolving state practice in gender and transitional justice over the past two decades within the context of the enhanced protection of women’s human rights under international law. Relying on original empirical and legal research in Chile, Northern Ireland and Colombia, the book speaks more broadly to the study of gender politics and international law in transitional justice.