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

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.

Author(s):  
Ann Harrison

The Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) (http://www.hrdag.org/) analyzes the patterns and magnitude of large-scale human rights violations. Together with local partners, HRDAG collects and preserves human rights data and helps NGOs and other human rights organizations accurately interpret quantitative findings. HRDAG statisticians, programmers, and data analysts develop methodologies to determine how many of those killed and disappeared have never been accounted for - and who is most responsible. This account illustrates how HRDAG pioneered the calculation of scientifically sound statistics about political violence from multiple data sources including the testimony of witnesses who come forward to tell their stories. It describes methodologies that HRDAG analysts have developed to ensure that statistical human rights claims are transparently, demonstrably, and undeniably true.


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidy Rombouts ◽  
Stephan Parmentier

The last decade has witnessed a rapid development in the field of reparation for victims of serious human rights violations, both at the national and the international level. Both in (post-)conflict situations and in situations of large-scale human rights abuses it has become a major question of transitional justice how to repair the harm inflicted on victims through acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other forms of injustice. As institutions of international criminal justice, the International Criminal Court and the Trust Fund for Victims are also confronted with this question and the many issues involved. They have to address three crucial questions in particular: (a) who are the beneficiaries for reparation; (b) who are the duty-bearers of reparation; and (c) what forms of reparation can be awarded? We argue that the answers to these questions raise very important issues that go beyond a purely legal approach and that require an input from other scientific disciplines and also from other sectors of society, including victims and their organizations. We argue in particular in favour of a concept of reparation that seeks to attain a new balance and that will allow victims to cope with the past and the future alike, and therefore propose a process-oriented approach to reparation based on the work of Barkan and Habermas.


2015 ◽  
pp. 578-595
Author(s):  
Ann Harrison

The Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) (http://www.hrdag.org/) analyzes the patterns and magnitude of large-scale human rights violations. Together with local partners, HRDAG collects and preserves human rights data and helps NGOs and other human rights organizations accurately interpret quantitative findings. HRDAG statisticians, programmers, and data analysts develop methodologies to determine how many of those killed and disappeared have never been accounted for - and who is most responsible. This account illustrates how HRDAG pioneered the calculation of scientifically sound statistics about political violence from multiple data sources including the testimony of witnesses who come forward to tell their stories. It describes methodologies that HRDAG analysts have developed to ensure that statistical human rights claims are transparently, demonstrably, and undeniably true.


Author(s):  
Kinkino Kia Legide

At the end of the state perpetrated largescale violence, two important puzzling questions need to be addressed by post-conflict states. The first one chiefly concern how to ensure accountability or fight impunity, and the second is concerned with how to transform a society wrecked by prolonged conflicts into a durable peace in a non-violent means (Jarstad & Sisk, 2008). One such effort to deal with these questions was implementation of a transitional justice measures which evolved to encompass broader themes in addition to criminal accountability and it has shown a considerable relevance and expansion since the end of Cold War. After the demise of Marxist military junta of Derg regime in 1991, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia attempted to respond to the Derg-era atrocities of Red Terror through the establishment of Special Prosecution Office (SPO) in 1992. Ethiopia’s SPO undertook one of the most extensive criminal investigations after Nuremburg trials by its own resources and domestic tribunals and the mass trials lasted for nearly two decades. However, the assessment about its significance for domestic political transformation and its legacy remained largely untold. The aim of this paper is to make a critical review of available works on the ‘red terror trials’ and reconsider its achievements and pitfalls and to interrogate as to whether it can still provide important lessons for today’s reality. By critically reviewing available literatures and official reports, the paper found that the efforts of Red Terror trials partly succeeded in ending impunity, averting tendency of summary executions and revenge killings, and in eliciting some ‘truths. However, the measure was affected by severe limitations including the adopting the narrower model of transitional justice measures chiefly focusing on criminal prosecutions, and also questioned legitimacy of trials amidst human rights violations by the new regime itself. These limitations coupled with other factors constrained the capacity of the Derg’s Red Terror trials so that it remained short of being translated into a lasting legacy in terms of meaningful political transformation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Bonolo Ramadi Dinokopila ◽  
Rhoda Igweta Murangiri

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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-127
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Varani ◽  
Enrico Bernardini

Abstract Planetary interdependence makes the task of states and international organizations to guarantee security inside and outside national borders ever more urgent. The tendency is to widen the space from national to international and to conceive of security as multidimensional for the satisfaction of human needs, assumed as priority needs with respect to those of the States. The old concept of national security must today confront the new concept of human security cultivated within the United Nations, which places the fundamental rights of the individual and of people at the centre of attention and lays the foundations for overcoming the traditional politics of power. The concept of human security emphasises the security of the individual and his protection from political violence, war and arbitrariness. It takes account of the strong correlation between peace policy, human rights policy, migration policy and humanitarian policy. The contribution provides, through a series of social indicators such as the Global Peace Index (GPI), Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the World International Security and Policy Index (WISPI), a framework on risk, security, human rights violations in the African continent and examines some significant case studies related to sub-Saharan Africa.


Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin

This article explores the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) in the post-Libya era to determinewhether it is now an accepted norm of international law. It examines what RtoP means intoday`s world and whether the norm now means that steps will be taken against states thatare committing serious human rights violations. The building blocks of RtoP are examined tosee how to make the doctrine more relevant and more applicable. It is contended that theresponsibility to react should be viewed through a much wider lens and that it needs to bemore widely interpreted to allow it to gain greater support. It is argued that there is a need tofocus far more on the responsibility to rebuild and that it ought to focus on the transitionallegal architecture as well as transitional justice. It is contended that these processes ought notto be one-dimensional, but ought to have a variety of constituent parts. It is further arguedthat the international and donor community ought to be far more engaged and far moredirective in these projects.


Author(s):  
Kevin Hearty

Viewing Irish republican policing memory primarily through a transitional justice lens, this chapter critically examines how Irish republicans, as a principal party to the conflict, approach the difficult issue of ‘dealing with the past’ as both collective victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict. It will interrogate the range of divergent views within modern Irish republicanism on issues such as victimhood, truth recovery, ‘moving on’ and ‘dealing with the past’. In particular, it looks at how the memory of human rights violations framed the wider policing debate and led to a master narrative of ‘never again’ whereby the value of ‘remembering’ past abuses lay in helping to prevent future repetition. This is placed against a more general backdrop of the stop-start ‘dealing with the past’ process in the North of Ireland that has included the establishment, operation and subsequent replacement of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), the passage of the Civil Service (Special Advisers) Act (Northern Ireland), and proposals like the Haass/O’Sullivan document and the Stormont House Agreement.


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