Identity politics and hybrid tribunals

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 993-1014
Author(s):  
Aaron Fichtelberg

AbstractMany of the conflicts that have led to the creation of hybrid tribunals were identity-based conflicts – people who identified as members of one tribe, race, ethnicity, or religion used these distinctions as grounds to attack and persecute another group who often responded in kind. This reality means that the criminal justice processes that take place in the wake of such conflicts must take issues of identity seriously to be effective. This article uses the notion of framing contests to examine different identity-based responses to international justice. Defenders of the tribunals seek to portray them as impartial observers while critics paint them as illegitimate outsiders. Because hybrid tribunals have identity considerations as features built into them, they are better suited to promote their own legitimacy in these framing contests. These features include the personnel they use, the witnesses they call, the strategies their prosecutors deploy, and their local outreach programmes. Each of these tools can be used to frame the tribunal as a legitimate means to promote criminal justice and thereby advance the values of transitional justice.

Author(s):  
AnaLouise Keating

This chapter offers an alternative to more conventional versions of identity politics—transformational identity politics. Transformational identity politics represent nonbinary models of identity; differential subjectivities; an expanded, deeply multiplicitous concept of the universal; and relational epistemologies that facilitate the creation of new forms of commonalities. Although identity politics originated in a space of intersectionality that embraced multiple, complex identities, this chapter argues that contemporary uses of identity politics have become too oppositional to effect radical change. However, rather than entirely rejecting identity-based politics and the personalized experiences on which they're based, the chapter redefines identity by anchoring it in a metaphysics of interconnectedness. Through an analysis of Paula Gunn Allen's, Gloria Anzaldúa's, and Audre Lorde's threshold positionings (their creative use of identity politics, as it were), this chapter illustrates some of the forms transformational identity politics can take.


2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Duff

On 1 April 1996, a rather odd provision was introduced into the Scottish criminal justice process, namely a duty on both prosecution and defence to try to agree uncontroversial evidence in advance of criminal trial.1 As far as the writer is aware, such a provision is unique, although the philosophy underlying its introduction is not totally alien to inquisitorial systems of criminal justice.2 What is particularly peculiar about this duty is that there is no sanction for a failure, however unreasonable, to agree uncontroversial evidence.3 The lack of a sanction resulted from a concern that the creation of any penalty would impinge unjustifiably upon the rights of the accused. The intention in this article is to explore in detail the relationship between the duty to agree uncontroversial evidence and the position of the accused, and to suggest that the imposition of a sanction for a breach of this duty is not as problematic as was thought by those responsible for the legislation.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 380
Author(s):  
Matthew John Paul Tan

This paper will focus on one element of the pushback against the massive influx of immigrants taken in for humanitarian purposes, namely, an identity-based chauvinism which uses identity as the point of resistance to the perceived dilution of that identity, brought about by the transformation of culture induced by the incorporation of a foreign other. The solution to this perceived dilution is a simultaneous defence of that culture and a demand for a conformity to it. While those in the critical tradition have encouraged a counter-position of revolutionary transformation by the other through ethics, dialogue, or the multitude, such a transformation is arguably impeded by what is ultimately a repetition of the metaphysics of conformity. Drawing on the personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and the Eucharistic theology of Creston Davis and Aaron Riches, this paper submits an alternative identity politics position that completes the revolutionary impulse. Identity here is not the flashpoint of a self-serving conflict, but the launch-point of politics of self-emptying, whose hallmarks include, on the one hand, a never-ending reception of transformation by the other, and on the other hand, an anchoring in the Body of Christ that is at once ever-changing and never-changing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511876442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Kumar

Drawing on the e-Diasporas Atlas project ( www.e-diasporas.fr ) and original empirical research, this study examines the complex role of the World Wide Web in supporting and enabling new types of diaspora identity politics. It compares the online identity politics of two conflict-generated diasporas: Tamils and Palestinians. Both of these stateless diaspora communities maintain a strong web presence and have mobilized around various secessionist attempts, grievance narratives, issue-agendas, and calls for the right to self-determination that have garnered significant attention from the international community and mainstream media in recent times. Analytical concepts from transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and social movement literature are used to draw attention to the dynamic identity-based processes and framing mechanisms that connect diasporic demands and political claims across online and offline environments. The data combine Tamil and Palestinian e-Diasporas hyperlink network maps with web-based content analysis and key respondent interviews. The study argues that online diasporic exchanges transcend host–homeland territorial boundaries and invite comparatively expressive forms of identity-based political engagements that are simultaneously both deeply local and digitally global. In particular, the analysis demonstrates that human rights–based language offers a unique streamlining bridge between various locales, countries of settlement, and the international system more broadly.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
David O’Mahony

This article examines the incorporation of restorative principles and practices within reforms of Northern Ireland’s youth justice system, adopted following the peace process. It considers whether restorative justice principles can be successfully incorporated into criminal justice reform as part of a process of transitional justice. The article argues that restorative justice principles, when brought within criminal justice, can contribute to the broader process of transitional justice and peace building, particularly in societies where the police and criminal justice system have been entwined in the conflict. In these contexts restorative justice within criminal justice can help civil society to take a stake in the administration and delivery of criminal justice, it can help break down hostility and animosity towards criminal justice and contribute to the development of social justice and civic agency, so enabling civil society to move forward in a transitional environment.


2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jan Margry

In the economic and political unification process of Europe, the idea of the creation of a pan-European identity was put high on the political agenda. With the failure of this effort, the emphasis shifted to the apparently less fraught concept of 'shared cultural heritage'. This article analyses how the politically guided rediscovery of Europe's past has contributed to the creation of a 'Religion of Heritage', not only by raising up a political altar for cultural heritage, but also through the revitalisation, instrumentalisation and transformation of the Christian heritage, in order to try to memorialise and affirm a collective European identity based on its Christian past. In the context of this process, the network of European pilgrims' ways appears to have been an especially successful performative form of heritage creation, which has both dynamised Christian roots as a relevant trans-European form of civil religion that has taken shape, capitalising on the new religious and spiritual demands created by secularisation, and responded to the demand for shared - and Christian inspired - European values and meanings in times of uncertainty and crisis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (7) ◽  
pp. 831-867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle L. Marquardt

The disintegration of the Soviet Union is an essential case for the study of ethnic politics and identity-based mobilization. However, analyses in this article demonstrate that commonly used measures of ethnic diversity and politically relevant group concentration show little consistent relationship with events of ethnic mobilization in Soviet regions during the period 1987-1992. In contrast, the proportion of a regional population that did not speak a metropolitan language has a consistently strong negative relationship with mobilization across these regions. In line with recent work on identity politics, I argue that a lack of proficiency in a metropolitan language marks nonspeakers as outsiders and hinders their social mobility. Regions with many of these individuals thus have a relatively high potential for identity-based mobilization. These findings provide further impetus for looking beyond ethnic groups in measuring identity-based cleavages, and indicate that language can play an important role in political outcomes aside from proxying ethnicity.


Balcanica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 289-342
Author(s):  
Igor Vukovic

The system of criminal law norms passed in the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from its inception in 1941 was aimed at creating and maintaining an atmosphere of terror implemented by the Ustasha government. Although the framework of substantive and procedural rules of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was formally retained, immediately after the establishment of the NDH regulations introducing many new crimes punishable by death were enacted. Defining the ?honour and vital interests of the Croatian people? as an appropriate object of criminal law protection enabled the creation of a regime of legalized repression against non-Croat populations, with an extensive jurisdiction of martial criminal justice. In addition to abuse of the court martial mechanism, the criminal character of government was also manifested in the wide application of administrative and punitive measures of sending to concentration camps as well as collective punishment. In line with Radbruch?s thought, the author denies the legal character of the system of criminal law formally established in the territory of the NDH in the circumstances of genocide.


2005 ◽  
pp. 65-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Slobodan Naumovic

The text offers an examination of socio-political bases, modes of functioning, and of the consequences of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on Serbian disunity. The first section of the paper deals with what is being expressed and what is being done socially when narratives on Serbian disunity are invoked in everyday discourses. The next section investigates what political actor sty, by publicly replicating them, or by basing their speeches on key words of those narratives. The narratives on Serbian disunity are then related to their historical and social contexts, and to various forms of identity politics with which they share common traits. The nineteenth century wars over political and cultural identity, intensified by the struggle between contesting claims to political authority, further channeled by the development of party politics in Serbia and radicalized by conflicts of interest and ideology together provided the initial reasons for the apparition of modern discourses on Serbian disunity and disaccord. Next, addressed are the uninnally solidifying or misinterpreting really existing social problems (in the case of some popular narratives on disunity), or because of intentionally exploiting popular perceptions of such problems (in the case of most political meta-narratives), the constructive potential related to existing social conflicts and splits can be completely wasted. What results is a deep feeling of frustration, and the diminishing of popular trust in the political elites and the political process in general. The contemporary hyperproduction of narratives on disunity and disaccord in Serbia seems to be directly related to the incapacity of the party system, and of the political system in general, to responsibly address, and eventually resolve historical and contemporary clashes of interest and identity-splits. If this vicious circle in which the consequences of social realities are turned into their causes is to be prevented, conflicts of interest must be discursively disassociated from ideological conflicts, as well as from identity-based conflicts, and all of them have to be disentangled from popular narratives on splits and disunity. Most important of all, the practice of political instrumentalisation of popular narratives on disunity and disaccord has to be gradually abandoned.


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