Transitional Justice and Peace Agreements

Abstract

Transitional justice can be defined as the “conception of justice associated with periods of political change, characterized by legal responses to confront the wrongdoings of repressive predecessor regimes.”1 The definition itself is somewhat problematic, in that it implies a defined period of flux after which a post-transitional state sets in, whereas in practice “transition” may cover decades. It also does not articulate what the state is “transitioning” to. For those reasons, some people prefer to talk about “post-conflict” justice, but that label has its own problems, especially where what is at issue was not primarily a conflict between two armed factions but massive repression by a government against its own unarmed people. In any case, for purposes of this paper transitional justice includes that set of practices, mechanisms and concerns that arise following a period of conflict, civil strife or repression, and that are aimed at confronting and dealing with the legacies of past violations of human rights and humanitarian law