scholarly journals Autism, Advocacy Organizations, and Past Injustice

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Organizational Policies ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Us ◽  
Temporal Dimensions

Fruitful connections can be made between Disability Studies and post-conflict transitional justice, two areas of scholarship concerned with human rights and the impacts of violence that have rarely been brought into critical dialogue with one another. For over a decade, one of the world's largest and best-known autism organizations, the US-based Autism Speaks, has been subject to criticisms and boycotts by autistic self-advocates and their allies. This article describes the forms of harm attributed to the organization, arguing that these harms can be viewed through the lens of what transitional justice scholar Jill Stauffer calls "ethical loneliness": "the experience of being abandoned by humanity compounded by the experience of not being heard" (2015b, 1). I argue that Autism Speaks's recent reforms and responses to criticism, in focusing largely on present-day organizational policies and structures, fail to grasp the full temporal dimensions of ethical loneliness or the importance of addressing past injustice.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Collective violence and the culture of peace: researching the social psychology of memory and social reconciliation

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Nekane Basabe ◽  
Darío Páez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Community Intervention ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Psychosocial Effects ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Culture Of Peace

This monograph aims to disseminate the results of various research studies carried out in the field of social and community psychology. The studies focus on efforts to build a culture of peace in post-conflict contexts and societies that have suffered collective and socio-political violence, with multiple and persistent human rights violations. Six studies on the psychosocial effects of transitional justice rituals from Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Basque country, Chile, and Ecuador compose this issue. This issue presents a series of results regarding the effects of reparation rituals and Truth Commissions, combining different methods and analysis strategies, including general population surveys, newspaper and social media content analysis, community intervention assessments and qualitative documentary analysis. Finally, two review books were included. First, a Peace Psychology Book that explores the implications and difficulties faced by societies that have experienced large-scale collective violence. Second, the problem of human rights violations and how to confront them, socio-political conflicts and the building of a culture of democracy and peace in Latin America are transversal axes of the chapters of this second book.

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.

The Justice Facade

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Post Conflict

Is there a point to international justice? This book explores this question in Cambodia, where Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge revolutionaries committed genocide and crimes against humanity in an attempt to create a pure socialist regime (1975–1979). Due to geopolitics, it was only in 2006 that a UN-backed hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (“Khmer Rouge Tribunal”), commenced operation, one of a growing number of post-Cold War transitional justice interventions. The Justice Facade argues that there is a point to such tribunals, but it is masked by a set of utopian human rights and democratization ideals. Instead of projecting this transitional justice imaginary onto post-conflict peacebuilding efforts, we need to step behind the justice facade to examine what tribunals mean in terms of everyday life and practices—such as the Buddhist beliefs and ritual interactions with the spirits of the dead that are critical to Cambodian victims and survivors. In making this argument, The Justice Facade focuses on civil society outreach efforts to “translate” the court in terms meaningful to Cambodians, the majority of whom are rural villagers, as well as the experience of Cambodian civil parties who testified. This ground-breaking study of transitional justice and demonstration of the importance of examining “justice in translation” is of critical importance not just to those working in the field of transitional justice and law, but in related fields such as development, human rights, anthropology, and peacebuilding.

Emotional Legacies, Transitional Justice and Alethic Truth

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-165
Author(s):  
Janine Natalya Clark
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Therapeutic Jurisprudence ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Emotional Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Missed Opportunity

Abstract Transitional justice processes seek to address the legacy of past human rights abuses. This article focuses on the emotional dimensions of legacy. It argues that war crimes and human rights abuses leave important emotional legacies that have not received sufficient attention within transitional justice theory or practice, and underscores that any process of ‘dealing with the past’ is necessarily incomplete if powerful emotions connected to that past are overlooked. Drawing on the author’s fieldwork in the Bosnian village of Ahmići, the article aims to demonstrate that the neglect of emotional legacies — which it links to the concept of therapeutic jurisprudence — represents a missed opportunity to explore how the meta emotions that people share constitute potential new bases for building reconciliation in post-conflict societies such as Bosnia-Herzegovina. Reflecting more broadly on the relationship between truth and reconciliation, it emphasizes the utility of alethic truth as a concept that accommodates and draws attention to common emotions — and thus points to unexplored dimensions of the relationship between truth and reconciliation.

Transitional Justice in Chechnya: NGO Political Advocacy for Implementing Chechen Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 363-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek van der Vet
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
Criminal Prosecution ◽  
Political Advocacy ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
European Court ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study ◽  
The Russian Federation

This article asserts that Russian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) contribute to processes of transitional justice in Chechnya through their litigation in front at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Having delivered more than 200 judgments on atrocities which occurred during the two recent conflicts in Chechnya, the ECtHR has repeatedly ruled that the state should pay financial compensation to the victims. While the Russian Federation has been following through on such payments, human-rights monitors allege that domestic authorities have failed to take active measures to address the atrocities themselves.Through a qualitative interview study with Russian lawyers and NGO representatives, this article seeks to scrutinize how NGOs have been using the ECtHR’s mechanisms and judgments by way of leverage to initiate processes of transitional justice in post-conflict Chechnya. It appears that the ECtHR is not an end-station for human-rights claims and individual grievances but, rather, the start of a series of further claims. NGOs: (a) engage in political advocacy in implementing the judgments; and (b) create leverage for the criminal prosecution of perpetrators.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document