Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Beiner
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
The Political ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

An understanding of the historical dynamics of social forgetting can be learned from the detailed case study of the vernacular historiography of the 1798 Rebellion in Ulster. It has far-reaching implications for a more meaningful appreciation of the relationship between history and memory. The political impasse in post-conflict Northern Ireland, which has stumbled over disagreements on ‘dealing with the past’ in the context of finding acceptable arrangements for transitional justice, could benefit from showing more sensitivity, not only to the role of oral history storytelling, but also to ingrained traditions of ‘vernacular silence’ that perpetuate social forgetting. A brief inspection of some prominent twentieth-century examples demonstrates the wider relevance of studying social forgetting. In today’s digital age, explorations of social forgetting suggest new possibilities for reconciling conflicts between an inner duty to remember and the right to be outwardly forgotten.

scholarly journals Local Uses of International Criminal Justice in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Transcending Divisions or Building Parallel Worlds?

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dejan Guzina ◽  
Branka Marijan
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
The Relationship

Transitionaljustice mechanisms and the International Criminal Tribunal for the FormerYugoslavia (ICTY) have had only a limited success in overcoming ethnic divisionsin Bosnia-Herzegovina. Rather than elaborating upon the role of local politicalelites in perpetuating ethnic divisions, we examine ordinary peoples’ popularperceptions of war and its aftermath. In our view, the idea that elites havecomplete control over the broader narratives about the past is misplaced. Weargue that transitional justice and peace mechanisms supported by externalactors are always interpreted on the ground in context-specific ways, creatingdifferent citizens’ experiences, “memories” of the war, and their respectivehopes and disappointments in regards to the relationship between peace andjustice in Bosnia. We suggest that analyses of the post-conflict developments inBosnia-Herzegovina must take into account what gives the narratives ofexclusion their power, and what are the objective political, social andeconomic constraints that continue to provide a fertile ground for theirwidespread support.

Higher education, post-conflict democratization and the legacies of authoritarian rule: The Tripoli University Programme for Rebuilding Libya

2021 ◽  
pp. 174619792098136
Author(s):  
Sansom Milton
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Transitional Processes ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper, the role of higher education in post-uprising Libya is analysed in terms of its relationship with transitional processes of democratization and civic development. It begins by contextualising the Libyan uprising within the optimism of the ‘Arab Spring’ transitions in the Middle East. Following this, the relationship between higher education and politics under the Qadhafi regime and in the immediate aftermath of its overthrow is discussed. A case-study of a programme designed to support Tripoli University in contributing towards democratisation will then be presented. The findings of the case-study will be reflected upon to offer a set of recommendations for international actors engaging in political and civic education in conflict-affected settings, in particular in the Middle East.

Memory and Politics in Democratic Spain

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Omar G. Encarnación
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right

This chapter explains the persistence of Spain’s ‘politics of forgetting’, a phenomenon revealed by the wilful intent to disremember the political memory of the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the human rights abuses of General Franco’s authoritarian regime. Looking beyond the traumas of the Civil War, the limits on transitional justice and truth-telling on the Franco regime imposed by a transition to democracy anchored on intra-elite pacts, and the conciliatory and forward-looking political culture that consolidated in the new democracy, this analysis emphasizes a decidedly less obvious explanation: the political uses of forgetting. Special attention is paid to how the absence of a reckoning with the past, protected politicians from both the right and the left from embarrassing and inconvenient political histories; facilitated the reinvention of the major political parties as democratic institutions; and lessened societal fears about repeating past historical mistakes. The conclusion of the chapter explains how the success of the current democratic regime, shifting public opinion about the past occasioned by greater awareness about the dark policies and legacies of the Franco regime, and generational change among Spain’s political class have in recent years diminished the political uses of forgetting. This, in turn, has allowed for a more honest treatment of the past in Spain’s public policies.

scholarly journals 17. Criminology and transitional justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kieran McEvoy ◽  
Ron Dudai ◽  
Cheryl Lawther
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the intersection between criminology and transitional justice. The chapter begins with a critical discussion on the utility of criminological scholarship from settled democracies to the exceptional circumstances of post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies. It then explores a range of debates related to the punishment of offenders in such contexts including the role of prosecutions, amnesties, the reintegration of former combatants, and the role of restorative justice. The chapter next considers the social and political construction of victimhood in transitional contexts including competing notions of the ‘idealized’ victim. The relationship between transitional justice and social control is then examined including the importance of countering denial, the relationship between deviance and memory and the particular contribution of efforts ‘from below’ to counter elites-level narratives on past abuses. The chapter concludes that a criminology of transitional justice provides the basis for revisiting some of the foundational questions on responding to crime and justice in the most challenging of settings—a sobering but intellectually rich research agenda for years to come.

How Conditional Amnesties Can Assist Transitional Societies in Delivering on the Right to the Truth

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Julian Sarkin
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Transitional Societies ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Legal Consequences ◽  
Made In

This article explores how conditional amnesties can assist post-conflict societies to recover truth. It examines how such amnesties can be used optimally to achieve the best results as part of transitional justice mechanisms. Thus, a central question is to see how amnesties can be used for truth recovery purposes. For that reason, the status and role of amnesties, and whether such amnesties can be used to learn more about the past and assist in truth recovery is explored. The article explores what amnesties are, how prevalent they are and how amnesties can be used optimally to achieve the best results. An issue that is also explored is whether amnesties are needed for perpetrators to participate in transitional justice mechanisms. The argument that is made, in this regard, is that amnesty is absolutely necessary to persuade perpetrators to testify. If they do not have such legal protection, perpetrators fear the legal consequences that may result if they admit to crimes for which they have not been charged. Another question that is examined concerns whether amnesties, and specifically conditional amnesties, pass international law muster. This article therefore investigates the continual and extensive use of amnesty to determine whether a conditional amnesty violates international law. The article suggests how a conditional amnesty process could be structured and what difficulties such a process should avoid if perpetrators are to enter such a process.

On demons and dreamers: Violence, silence and the politics of impunity in the Brazilian Truth Commission

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 316-333
Author(s):  
Henrique Furtado
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Revolutionary Violence ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Brazilian Case

Measures towards post-conflict or post-authoritarian justice have historically relied on the merging of the concepts of silence, violence and impunity in order to create a single promise of justice. Scholars and practitioners in the field usually defend a trifold agenda of breaking the silence about violations of human rights, denouncing systematic violence in the past and fighting impunity as the only way of ensuring that violence never happens again. This trope was mobilized in Brazil in 2014, when the report of the country’s National Truth Commission (CNV) was released. However, in the Brazilian case, truth-seeking also produced its own form of ‘silence’. Whereas the CNV commendably denounced 377 perpetrators as the ‘demons’ responsible for implementing a state of terror during the last dictatorship (1964–1985), it also created a depoliticized and victimized idea of leftist militants as mere dreamers who fought for liberty and democracy in the past. By representing leftist militants as freedom fighters, the CNV silenced their fundamental ideas (and actions) regarding the concept of revolutionary violence and its radical programme of structural change. In this article, I provide an explanation that connects the CNV’s ‘silencing’ of this political project to the unreflective merging between the concepts of silence, violence and impunity in the literature. Via a narrative analysis of the CNV’s report and a critique of transitional justice debates, I argue that the silence on the political project of the radical left in Brazil echoes transitional justice’s silence about the complexities of violence in general.

Memories of the 1999 NATO Bombing in Belgrade, Serbia

Südosteuropa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Orli Fridman
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Yugoslav Wars ◽  
Nato Bombing ◽  
Transformation Processes

AbstractThis paper analyses the memories of Belgrade residents of the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia (then part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). By focusing on the memories of this event, yet placing them in a broader context of the conflicts of the 1990s—the breakup of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav wars—this essay explores what international intervention has meant to respondents in Belgrade by documenting memories of international intervention among older and younger generations, as well as among active members of antiwar NGOs in Serbia and citizens who were not engaged in activism during the 1990s. The paper aims to expand the scope of the discussions on dealing with the past and on transitional justice in the Western Balkans and to place them in the context of social memory studies and the study of post-conflict transformation processes. Furthermore, by presenting the case study of Serbia, this text contributes to the analysis of local mnemonic batt les as part of the creation of collective memories of the 1990s in post-Milošević Serbia, and it sheds light on the memories of the bombing as related to the war in Kosovo and the subsequent effects on shaping postwar Serbia–Kosovo relations.

Justice & Memory: South Africa's Constitutional Court

Daedalus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
pp. 168-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate O'Regan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
New Order ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
The Relationship

In a society such as South Africa in which the past has been deeply unjust, and in which the law and judges have been central to that injustice, establishing a shared conception of justice is particularly hard. There are four important strands of history and memory that affect the conception of justice in democratic, post-apartheid South Africa. Two of these, the role of law in the implementation of apartheid, and the grant of amnesty to perpetrators of gross human rights violations, are strands of memory that tend to undermine the establishment of a shared expectation of justice through law. Two others, the deeprooted cultural practice of justice in traditional southern African communities, and the use of law in the struggle against apartheid, support an expectation of justice in our new order. Lawyers and judges striving to establish a just new order must be mindful of these strands of memory that speak to the relationship between law and justice.

The politics behind social protection in Nepal

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristie Drucza
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
Political Dimensions

This article is a qualitative case study on the political dimensions of social protection reforms in post-conflict Nepal. The article examines vertical versus horizontal party structures and the political economy of support for different parties, and how this relates to their social protection policies to help unpack gaps in the literature and provide a deeper understanding of both the constraints and opportunities for reform. Drawing on key informant interviews conducted in Nepal between 2012 and 2014, the article describes the attitudes of members of the main Nepalese political parties towards social protection, and analyses the proposals on social protection within party manifestos. It discusses the role of social protection in democratisation as well as limitations towards constructing a democratic welfare state grounded in the kind of clientelistic and patronage party politics that continue to dominate the political landscape in Nepal today. The article is relevant to those in the ‘thinking and working politically’ aid movement and those working towards social protection reforms in clientelist states.

Crossing boundaries

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-97
Author(s):  
Nicola Laneri
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractArchaeology is not just about writing reports and interpreting ancient societies and their social structures, but it is also a process which should aim at the creation of a clear communicative message to the general public. Thus, archaeologists should be aware of every possible medium of communication – verbal, written, visual, sound – to express re-constructions of ancient pasts. In this essay I express some ideas about how archaeologists could collaborate with experts, for example theatre directors, in defining artistic way of communicating the past. Finally, I focus on the relationship between academia and fringe archaeology and I look into the political role of archaeologists in modern society.

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