Reconceptualising Transitional Justice: The Latin American Experience

Reconceptualising Transitional Justice: The Latin American Experience (project # 201412) is a three-year international research project (2010-2013) analysing national experiences with transitional justice in Latin America. It has used a comparative approach to examine trajectories in truth, justice, reparations and amnesties in countries emerging from periods of massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law. Our guiding question: Has there been a shift from impunity to accountability in Latin America, and what role has transitional justice played in that shift? How we did it: Applying a common analytical framework developed by the project team, each of the nine country studies - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay - has been carried out by a local researcher and an international country specialist. They have drawn on original, primary research, collected in the period 2011-2013, combining secondary sources with extensive interviews with a variety of actors in the transitional justice field: judges, prosecutors, academics, politicians, human rights activists, historians, journalists etc. What we found: - Countries coming out of military dictatorship have in general succeeded in putting more transitional justice mechanisms in place sooner after the transition to democracy (Brazil is the exception) than have countries coming out of armed conflict. - Whereas all nine countries have uniformly established truth commissions (Brazil being the obvious late comer, and Colombia having recently announced one), there is a notable geographical bias in the use of trials. The Southern Cone countries (which all have had military rule) have been more inclined to prosecute state agents responsible for human rights violations than countries that have come out of (or are in the process of coming out of) armed conflict. - The only countries where amnesty laws have been successfully challenged are in the Southern Cone. Who participated: The research has been carried out by the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen and the University of Oslo, in close collaboration with five Latin American research and practitioner institutions: Universidad Diego Portales (Chile), Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, CELS (Argentina), IDEHPUPC (Peru), FLACSO (Guatemala), and DeJustica (Colombia). An interdisciplinary team with backgrounds in Political Science, Anthropology, Human Geography, Sociology and Law, comprising researchers and research assistants from all institutions, have been involved in the project. Where can I find more? Our project results are coming out in an edited volume that includes the theoretical framework and nine country cases of TJ processes in Latin America. Our team has presented project results in seminars, popular presentations, and other publications. Visit the project website: http://www.cmi.no/research/project/1286=reconceptualising-transitionaljustice# presentation.www.cmi.no

This project aims to systematically explore the impacts of four so-called transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms in nine post-conflict situations in Latin America. The literature claims that mechanisms such as criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, amnes ties, and victims reparations are important aspects of peacebuilding as they help create a break with the past; establish the rule of law and respect for human rights; deter violence; encourage democratisation; and promote peace, justice and reconciliatio n. Despite close to a quarter of a century of experience with TJ, there is scarce, and oftentimes conflicting, empirical evidence to support these bold claims. Given the enormous resources that the international community channels into TJ initiatives an d the potentially significant - negative or positive - impact these measures may have on individuals and conflict-torn communities, it is crucial from a theoretical as well as political perspective to gain better understanding of how these currently expan ding forms of social engineering impact on societies where they are carried out. By focusing on the historical conflict context, timing and sequencing of TJ mechanisms, this project contributes new understanding of these strategies and their implications for peacebuilding in two ways: First, by building a conceptual and theoretical framework to explain how the choice of mechanisms for handling gross human rights violations (truth commissions, trials, amnesties, and reparations) affects peacebuilding. Seco nd, by generating empirical knowledge through structured comparative analysis of nine countries. This includes an in-depth study of transitional justice in the ongoing peacebuilding process in Colombia; a unique experience in the Latin American context. T he project will be carried out jointly by an interdisciplinary research team based at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (Bergen), the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (Oslo) and Universidad Diego Portales (Santiago).