Transitional justice after violent conflict The need for accountability, restorative justice and gender-sensitive approaches

• Published in: Peacebuilding in Crisis pp. 110 - 136
• Main Author: Fischer, Martina
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2016
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: BiH; CPN; quantitative approaches; Liberal Peace Agents; KPNLF; Rebel Side; Political Power Sharing; East Timor; Liberal Peacebuilding; Liberal Peace; DDR Programme; Socioeconomic Development; Local Turn; Peacebuilding Interventions; peacebuilders; postwar societies; UN; transitional justice; qualitative approaches; Conflict Parties; South Sudan; conflict transformation; Norm Diffusion; Peacebuilding Practices; academic discourse; SSR; African Rebel Groups; Car; DR Congo; Territorial Power Sharing
• ISBN: 9781138858596; 0815364466; 9780815364467; 1138858595
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315717852-9

This chapter presents an overview of the debate on transitional justice and discusses the potential of different approaches against the background of peace-building and conflict transformation. It argues that the concepts of transitional justice and reconciliation should be seen as complementary in order to open spaces for reconciliation and conflict transformation in postwar societies. The academic discourse has moved on in the sense that transitional justice and reconciliation are increasingly seen as complementary rather than competing concepts. Quantitative approaches aiming to measure effects of transitional justice mechanisms will in most cases not be appropriate, as these can only be assessed over a longer time frame decades or generations. Case studies based on qualitative approaches can provide important insights and help to systematise the complex demands and thereby prevent external peacebuilders from rushing into action while upholding unrealistic expectations. Finally, to fill the aforementioned research gaps, the views of those affected need to be included more systematically. This chapter explains the normative and institutional underpinnings of the Western notions of the security and justice sector, and offers an account of how these are discursively constructed, rather than being evidence based. The three elements of this vision were also manifest in particular practices, most notably in security sector reform (SSR), disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), and rule of law (RoL) programmes. Burundi became a focus country for the UN Peacebuilding Commission; the World Bank made it eligible for the Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Programme (MDRP) for DDR; the European Union and a host of bilateral donors all played significant roles in DDR, SSR, and RoL programming. The post-conflict peacebuilding project in Burundi was subject to the same intense international engagement as in Sudan, albeit with somewhat different dynamics. Peacebuilding interventions, while ambitious in their social engineering scope, are often just moments in a much longer process of social and political change.