Transitional Justice

Democratic transitions

• powerful outgoing regime will not accept trials, but will accept truth commissions
• no truth commission if public demand for accounting is weak

Post-conflict governments

• will rebels stop fighting without amnesty?

Options for Transitional Governments (Skar, Graybill)

Pardon

• truth commissions
• reveal facts of HR violations
• amnesty for testimony
• reconciliation as the aim
• South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
  • investigated abuses from 1960-1994
  • co-chairs were Anglican bishop & Methodist Church president
  •  only 7000 amnesty applicants, 16% granted
  •  

Punishment

• trials of former regime and rebels
• risk of 'justice without reconciliation'
• what laws to use?
• Dual Track in Rwanda
  • UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 1994
    • 28 verdicts, 28 on-going; 12 pending
  • Domestic courts, 1996
    • 85,000 detained only 6500 trials
    • 22,000 released in Aug. 2005
  • Gacaca panels in 2002
    • exclude genocide and sexual torture
    • 60,000 confessions by March 2004
    • apology & restitution
• Sierra Leone's "Special Court", 2002
  • partially reversed 1999 Lomé Accord amnesty

Amnesia

• do nothing 
• Mozambique's response to Frelimo-Renamo civil war (1975-1992)

  • Curandeiros 'remove the war' from formal combatants

• is reconciliation possible?

'No Justice, No Peace' v. Order Instead of Justice

• without justice, wars will resume
  • trials necessary
• continued war without amnesties
  • amnesia or pardon i

From Elin Skar, "Truth commissions, trials-or nothing? Policy options in democratic transitions," Third World Quarterly 20:6 (December 1999)