Victims of Environmental Harm During Conflict

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merryl Lawry-White
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Conflict Setting ◽  
Post Conflict

This chapter considers the interaction of some of the applicable norms related to liability and reparation for environmental damage in a post-conflict setting, including human rights and humanitarian law norms (including precedents) and their interaction with each other, with a focus on the potential consequences for victims. Using displacement as a specific case study, the discussion regarding potential consequences is supported by the learning that may be drawn from precedent reparations schemes, including those implemented in a ‘transitional justice’ framework as part of an attempt to afford ‘justice’ for breaches of human rights and humanitarian law (whether related to the environment or otherwise). The chapter considers some of the potential challenges of this interaction, particularly for justice initiatives, and particularly reparations schemes, experienced in the aftermath of conflict, such as constructing a coherent post-conflict narrative, restitution (or ‘truth’), awarding reparation (including ‘restitution’), and reconciliation as part of ‘peacebuilding’.

Using a Framework of Human Rights and Transitional Justice for Post-Conflict Environmental Protection and Remediation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Hulme
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Environmental Remediation ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Review State

The chapter analyses examples of post-conflict environmental damage and suggests how human rights legal mechanisms could provide vital assistance in their remedy. Environmental remediation in the post-conflict context tends to emanate from environmental obligations, if it is recognized at all. Transitional justice mechanisms and human rights obligations, however, are developing in terms of environmental protection. Environmental damage is, clearly, a human rights issue, especially in the protection of survival resources, such as water and food, as well as health—which are vital in a post-conflict context. Human rights can also help address toxic remnants and natural resource depletion. With the expansion of economic, social, and cultural rights to incorporate environmental dimensions, and even what would traditionally be viewed as pure environmental concerns at times, such a framework could provide strong legal obligations on states to undertake environmental clean-up and restoration—and strong mechanisms to review state actions and ensure environmental remediation.

Reflections on international humanitarian law and transitional justice: lessons to be learnt from the Latin American experience

2006 ◽  
Vol 88 (862) ◽  
pp. 327-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Salmón G.
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
American States ◽  
Justice Process

Compliance with or violations of international humanitarian law during an armed conflict undoubtedly influence the conduct of the judiciary, the situations of the victims and the correlation of forces in the post-conflict society. This article seeks to determine the influence of international humanitarian law on the transitional justice process. The author examines the specific experience of certain Latin American states that have been deeply affected by serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.

Using African Truth and Reconciliation Commission documentation for truth telling and reconciliation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Proscovia Svärd
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commissions ◽  
Reconciliation Process

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are established to document violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in post-conflict societies. The intent is to excavate the truth to avoid political speculations and create an understanding of the nature of the conflict. The documentation hence results in a common narrative which aims to facilitate reconciliation to avoid regression to conflict. TRCs therefore do a tremendous job and create compound documentation that includes written statements, interviews, live public testimonies of witnesses and they also publish final reports based on the accumulated materials. At the end of their mission, TRCs recommend the optimal use of their documentation since it is of paramount importance to the reconciliation process. Despite this ambition, the TRCs’ documentation is often politicized and out of reach for the victims and the post-conflict societies at large. The TRCs’ documentation is instead poorly diffused into the post conflict societies and their findings are not effectively disseminated and used.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights under the 2010 Constitutional Dispensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Bonolo Ramadi Dinokopila ◽  
Rhoda Igweta Murangiri
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
National Commission ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
National Human ◽  
The Status ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights

This article examines the transformation of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and discusses the implications of such transformation on the promotion and protection of human rights in Kenya. The article is an exposition of the powers of the Commission and their importance to the realisation of the Bill of Rights under the 2010 Kenyan Constitution. This is done from a normative and institutional perspective with particular emphasis on the extent to which the UN Principles Relating to the Status of National Institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the Paris Principles, 1993) have been complied with. The article highlights the role of national human rights commissions in transformative and/or transitional justice in post-conflict Kenya. It also explores the possible complementary relationship(s) between the KNCHR and other Article 59 Commissions for the better enforcement of the bill of rights.

Taking Stock

2020 ◽  
pp. 268-288
Author(s):  
Dawnie Steadman ◽  
Sarah Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Forensic Genetics ◽  
International Committee ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Missing Persons ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis

This chapter explores the evolving role of forensic genetics in human rights investigations and as a technology of postmortem identification for missing persons in ongoing conflict and post-conflict societies. How has DNA’s increasingly privileged place as a line of evidence impacted the field in terms of both medico-legal standards and heightened expectations among surviving kin and their communities? Drawing on interviews with leading figures in the field of forensic science and human rights/transitional justice (e.g., the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, and the Colibrí Center for Human Rights), buttressed by ethnographic analysis of exhumation and identification efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Uganda, the chapter provides an overview and commentary about the technology’s complicated place in unearthing truths and effecting repair.

22. Transitional Justice

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna R. Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Retributive Justice ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
The Social

This chapter examines the link between transitional justice and human rights. Atrocities such as genocide, disappearances, torture, civil conflict, and other gross violations of human rights leave states with a puzzling and often difficult question: what to do with the perpetrators of such acts of violence. Transitional justice takes into account the social implications of such conflicts. Its emphasis is on how to rebuild societies in the period after human rights violations, as well as with how such societies, and individuals within those societies, should be held to account for their actions. The chapter considers three paradigms of transitional justice, namely: retributive justice, restorative justice, and reparative justice. It also discusses the proliferation of the number of mechanisms of transitional justice at work and concludes with a case study of transitional justice in Uganda.

Haunting and transitional justice: On lives, landscapes and unresolved pasts

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Cheryl Lawther
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Transmission Of Trauma

This article explores practices of haunting and ghosting after conflict-related loss. This is not to suggest a focus on the occult or the paranormal, but to use these phenomena as a prism through which to understand the intersection between unresolved pasts and the transmission of trauma post-conflict. As Michael Levan notes, trauma lingers ‘unexorcisably in the places of its perpetration, in the bodies of those affected, in the eyes of the witnesses, and in the politics of memory’. The ghost, according to Avery Gordon ‘is the principal form by which something lost or invisible or seemingly not there makes itself known or apparent to us’. In this article I argue for three conceptualisations of haunting when past traumas remain unaddressed: the haunting of lost lives, the haunting of landscape, and the haunting presence of the unresolved past. The article focuses on Northern Ireland, a post-conflict jurisdiction described as being haunted by a ‘conflict calendar in which every day is an anniversary’ and extensive fieldwork with victims and survivors of the conflict. The article concludes by arguing that the presence of ghosts and the experience of haunting represent a ‘call to action’ in the quest to deal with a legacy of violent conflict and human rights abuses.

Rwanda

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doris Buss ◽  
Jerusa Ali
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Social Outcomes ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Female Politicians

Since the end of the genocide and civil war in Rwanda, various measures have been implemented to facilitate women’s political participation. This chapter looks to post-conflict Rwanda as a case study in the successes and limitations in efforts to increase women’s participation in public life. The chapter details the desired outcomes of increased political participation by women before turning to the Rwandan example. It argues that while the increased presence of women in public life has resulted in some positive economic, political, and social outcomes, the power of female politicians is largely limited and has not resulted in sustainable or equitable long-term policies. The chapter concludes that while Rwanda has formally adopted many of the international best practices of transitional justice, its overall gains in women’s participation are more uneven, contradictory, and nonlinear than is often recognized.

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