Detention, a Game More Than Just Games

This paper's main topic is how Taiwan's self-made video game Detention affects Taiwanese young people's understanding of their history and how this will affect the promotion of transitional justice in Taiwan. First, it summarizes its features and achievements of the international video game industry. Moreover, after briefing the story content, it explains its strategies for interpreting the White Terror, the performance of trauma, and how the Taiwanese learn more about their history while playing games. Finally, it demonstrates the uniqueness of games from other traditional media, which provides another possibility and imagination for young people to understand history.

The aftermath of transnational illegal adoptions: Redressing human rights violations in the intercountry adoption system with instruments of transitional justice

A growing movement of illegally adopted individuals request remedies and reparations for the human rights violations that they and their biological families had suffered. This article explores a number of measures that the stakeholders in the receiving countries can use in an effort to repair the human rights violations caused by illegal intercountry adoptions, borrowing ideas from transitional justice. In order to effectively redress the harm inflicted upon victims of illegal adoptions, a policy on remedies should combine instruments of retributive justice, aimed at holding wrongdoers accountable, with measures of restorative justice that focus on the victims’ needs and interests.

THE FAILURE OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN AFGHANISTAN: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION

In every phase of the conflict in Afghanistan, serious War Crimes and crimes against humanity were committed, resulting in mass killings and forced displacement of millions of Afghan civilians and political opponents. Based on relevant literature, this article investigates the political factors responsible for the failure of transitional justice in Afghanistan, particularly internal and external factors. The article also brings to the fore the impact of the dual process of state-building and peace-building on the implementation of transitional justice. In addition, the paper investigates why the 'Peace first and justice later' strategy proved to be unsuccessful in Afghanistan as the Taliban continued their atrocities, fighting Afghan forces and killing innocent people in suicide attacks. The paper finds that the failure of transitional justice in Afghanistan is due to both internal and external factors. Further, the paper finds that Afghanistan has never been a post-conflict state, unlike other countries that have experienced transitional justice processes. Therefore transitional justice measures were never implemented.

A trans-scalar approach to peacebuilding and transitional justice: Insights from the Democratic Republic of Congo

Peace research has taken a local turn. Yet, conceptual ambiguities, risks of romanticization, and critiques of co-option of the “local” point to the need to look for novel ways to think about the interactions of actors ranging from the global to the local level. Gearoid Millar proposes a trans-scalar approach to peace based on a “consistency of purpose” and a “parity of esteem” for actors across scales. This article analyzes the concept of trans-scalarity in the peace process in Ituri, a province in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Drawing on qualitative data from more than a year of research in the DRC, I argue that while a trans-scalar approach was taken to end violence, it was not applied to transitional justice initiatives. The result was a negative, rather than a positive peace. By showing the high, but still untapped, potential of trans-scalarity, the article makes three contributions. First, it advances the debate on the local turn by adding empirical insights on trans-scalarity and further developing the concept’s theoretical foundations. Second, it provides novel empirical insights on the transitional justice process in the DRC. Third, it links scholarship on peacebuilding and transitional justice, which have often remained disconnected.