GSDRC Topic Guides: Topic guides with links to reports, books, articles, and additional resources under headings for
designing strategies, timing, as well as library links to other resources. This topic guide is on transitional justice, another guide is on Conflict, including a chapter on recovering from violent conflict.
Tufts Libraries Research Guide: Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Society: Includes databases, journals, websites, and publications
Research Handbook on Transitional Justice by
Providing detailed and comprehensive coverage of the transitional justice field, this Research Handbook brings together leading scholars and practitioners to explore how societies deal with mass atrocities after periods of dictatorship or conflict. Situating the development of transitional justice in its historical context, social and political context, it analyses the legal instruments that have emerged. The Research Handbook is extensive in scope, with chapters discussing the concepts, actors, mechanisms and practices of transitional justice. They address the challenges of implementing a range of transitional justice mechanisms, including methods of truth recovery, criminal trials and reparation and lustration programmes. Going a step further, this book also expands the gaze of transitional justice to include underexplored areas, such as art and transitional justice, media and transitional justice and unique international case studies, such as Cambodia and Palestine.
The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation by
In addition to being a major area of research within International Relations, peacebuilding and statebuilding is a major policy area within the UN and other international and regional organizations. It is also a concern of international financial institutions, including the World Bank, and asignificant factor in the foreign and security policies of many established and emerging democracies. Peacebuilding and statebuilding are among the main approaches for preventing, managing, and mitigating global insecurities; dealing with the humanitarian consequences of civil wars; and expandingdemocracy and neoliberal economic regimes. Peace formation is a relatively new concept, addressing how local actors work in parallel to international and national projects, and helps shape the legitimacy of peace processes and state reform.The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual and policy landscape. It offers a systematic overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels, as well askey policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining all segments of peacebuilding and statebuilding praxis. Approaching peacebuilding from disciplinary perspectives across the social sciences, the Handbook is organized around four major thematic sections. Section one explores howpeacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation is conceived by different disciplines and IR approaches, thus offering an overview of the conceptual bedrock of major theories and approaches. Section two situates these approaches among other major global issues, including globalization, civilsociety, terrorism, and technology to illustrate their global, regional, and local resonance. Section three looks at key themes in the field, including peace agreements, democratization, security reform, human rights, environment, and culture. Finally, section four looks at key features of everydayand civil society peace formation processes, both in theory and in practice.
Transitional Justice by
This collection on transitional justice sits as part of a library of essays on different concepts of 'justice'. Yet transitional justice appears quite different from other types of justice and fundamental ambiguities characterise the term that raise questions as to how it should sit alongside other concepts of justice. This collection attempts to capture and portray three different dimensions of the transitional justice field. Part I addresses the origins of the field which continue to bedevil it. Indeed the origins themselves are increasingly debated in what is an emergent contested historiography of the field that assists in understanding its contemporary quirks and concerns. Part II addresses and sets out parts of the 'tool-kit' of transitional justice, which could be understood as the canonical research agenda of the field. Part III tries to convey a sense of the way in which the field is un-folding and extending to new transitions, tools, theories of justice, and self-critique.
Final Acts: A Guide to Preserving the Records of Truth Commissions by
Twenty truth commissions have completed their work of examining and reporting on the abuses of deposed regimes, leaving behind a wide variety of records: transcripts, video and audio recordings, e-mail and computer files, and artifacts. Why save such evidence? According to Trudy H. Peterson, preservation "completes the commission's work. Oppressive regimes try to impose a selective amnesia on society... Saving the records makes sure that amnesia does not prevail." Final Acts is a guide to questions of law, politics, physical preservation, and access regarding materials generated by truth commissions. For example, how do the records relate to the law that created the commission? Who owns the evidence? Are there political constraints on the preservation of, or access to, some records? Does the country have an institution professionally capable of maintaining the records? Final Acts also describes the truth commissions that have completed their work so far and the disposition, or in some cases the loss, of their records.
Truth Commissions and Criminal Courts by
This detailed evaluation of the relationship between trials and truth commissions challenges their assumed compatibility through an analysis of their operational features at national, inter-state and international levels. Alison Bisset conducts case-study analyses of national practice in South Africa, East Timor and Sierra Leone, evaluates the problems posed by the International Criminal Court and considers the challenges presented by the possibility of bystander state prosecutions. At each level, she highlights potential operational conflicts and formulates targeted proposals to enable effective coexistence.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission by
In 1995, South Africa's new government set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a lynchpin of the country's journey forward from apartheid. In contrast to the Nuremberg Trials and other retributive responses to atrocities, the TRC's emphasis on reconciliation marked a restorative approach to addressing human rights violations and their legacies. The hearings, headed by Bishop Desmond Tutu, began in spring of 1996. The commission was set up with three purposes: to investigate abuses, to assist victims with rehabilitation, and to consider perpetrators' requests for amnesty. More than two decades after the first hearings, the TRC's legacy remains mixed. Many families still do not know what became of their loved ones, and the commission came under legal challenges both from ex-president F. W. de Klerk and the African National Congress. Yet, the TRC fulfilled a vital role in the transition from apartheid to democracy, and has become a model for other countries.
The Politics of Transitional Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa by
This book discusses the challenge of pursuing justice and reconciliation in the Great Lakes region, one of the most politically volatile regions in Africa, with a specific focus on Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The experiences of these countries is assessed through the prism of 'the politics of transitional justice', and how it has either assisted or hampered the effectiveness of efforts to deal with the atrocities of the past. The book suggests that the failure of past interventions is due to the inability to collectively engage the violations in the individual countries which in effect form part of an inter-state regional conflict system.
Resilience, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Transitional Justice by
This interdisciplinary book constitutes the first major and comparative study of resilience focused on victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Locating resilience in the relationships and interactions between individuals and their social ecologies (including family, community, non-governmental organisations and the natural environment), the book develops its own conceptual framework based on the idea of connectivity. It applies the framework to its analysis of rich empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda, and it tells a set of stories about resilience through the contextual, dynamic and storied connectivities between individuals and their social ecologies. Ultimately, it utilises the three elements of the framework - namely, broken and ruptured connectivities, supportive and sustaining connectivities and new connectivities - to argue the case for developing the field of transitional justice in new social-ecological directions, and to explore what this might conceptually and practically entail.
USIP (US Institute of Peace): Truth Commission Digital Collection: Profiles of truth commissions and bodies of inquiry worldwide, with background information, links to official texts, and final reports and findings
University of Texas Austin Libraries Human Rights Documentation Initiative: Web archive of vulnerable of records of human rights struggles worldwide.
Department of State Transitional Justice Policy Paper Series: Short policy papers developed to reflect US policy understanding of a range of transitional justice mechanisms related to peace-building, accountability, human rights, and reciliation in post-conflict and post-authoritarian transitions.
Transitional Justice Methods Manual: An Exchange on Researching and Assessing Transitional Justice (SwissPeace and Oxford Transitional Justice Research 2013): Questions, approaches, and further reading citations
University of Vermont / Vermont Legislative Research Service: Truth and Reconciliation Commissions Report (2021)
International Journal of Transitional Justice
CRS Report for Congress: Proposals for Reparations for African Americans: A Brief Overview RS20740 (2003)
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence. : International instruments, annual reports, country visits, and documents.
OHCHR Transitional Justice and Human Rights: Documents, thematic papers, publications, news.
OHCHR Rule of Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: (Archive). Guidance materials from the OHCHR on legal system monitoring, transitional justice, reparations, prosecutions, truth & reconciliation.
United Nations Security Council Report of the Secretary-General: The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies (S/2004/616).
United Nations Official Documents System Search (ODS): Search UN documents and resolutions by full-text, title words, subject matter, and document symbols.
Security Council Report: An independent organization with reports on the activities of the UN Security Council and its subsidiary bodies. Find reports by country and region, or by theme. Themes include Peacebuilding; Post-Conflict Stabilisation; Justice and the Rule of Law; and Human Rights. Country and theme pages include selected key UN Documents.
UN Development Programme: Africa: Support for 46 countries in accelerating achievement of the sustainable developments goals, including peace and security.
International Center for Transitional Justice: Publications include newsletters, reports, research papers, and submissions for the UN Universal Periodic Review. Filter your search by country and issue.
United States Institute of Peace: Resources on post-conflict reconstruction. Find publications by country or issue area, and handbooks in the issue areas of conflict analysis and prevention; electoral violence; fragility and resilience; human rights; justice, security, and rule of law; peace processes, and reconciliation.
Human Rights Studies Online (subscription database): Primary documents, articles, and video on major human rights crimes and conflict atrocities 1900-2010.
IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance): Publications and statistics databases on elections, constitution building, and democracy, with country-specific reports.
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation: Publications by subject include reports on restorative justice, peacebuilding, transitional justice, and reconciliation. Include books, policy briefs, and reports.
Websites of criminal tribunals and truth commissions have case information, judgments, reports, and documents.
International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals: Created to perform essential functions previously carried out by the ICTR and ICTY.
International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission
East Timor Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
El Salvador Commission on the Truth
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
USIP (US Institute of Peace): Truth Commission Digital Collection: Profiles of truth commissions and bodies of inquiry worldwide, with background information, links to official texts, and final reports and findings
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