International Journal of Transitional Justice Advance Access originally published online on November 6, 2008
International Journal of Transitional Justice 2008 2(3):331-355; doi:10.1093/ijtj/ijn031
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Transitional Justice and Peace Building: Diagnosing and Addressing the Socioeconomic Roots of Violence through a Human Rights Framework
* Visiting Assistant Professor, Marquette University Law School, and Deputy Director, Praxis Institute for Social Justice, USA. Email: lisalaplante{at}hotmail.com
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Abstract
Introduction1Increasing numbers of violent street protests and riots caused by socioeconomic grievances often occur in countries whose truth commissions have studied similar past episodes of violence and repression. These new cycles of violence push us to ask what more transitional justice can do to promote the aims of reconciliation and sustainable peace. The author proposes that truth commissions expand their mandates to include a legal framework that examines the socioeconomic root causes of violence in terms of violations of economic, social and cultural rights. This approach would help increase the compulsion felt by states to redress these conditions, and at the same time would provide local actors with a legitimate platform to lobby for solutions to their grievances. She argues that if the underlying socioeconomic structures that lead to violence are not addressed, sustainable peace will remain beyond our reach. In this way, the proposal supports the development– security nexus paradigm adopted in the last decade in UN peace-building operations. To complement this work, truth commissions could contribute to postconflict recovery first by diagnosing the socioeconomic causes of conflict and then by issuing recommendations that would orient national political agendas toward addressing poverty and structural inequalities, namely through the promotion of sustainable development.
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Introduction |
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We are witnessing rising incidences of violent street protest and riots in countries like Chile, South Africa and Guatemala. Significantly, this violence often arises out of the same types of socioeconomic grievances that caused earlier periods of political violence and human rights violations in these same countries – situations later studied by their national truth commissions (TCs). Take, for example, the case of Peru. On the heels of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) final report, published in 2003, popular protest began steadily to increase. Protesters have included teachers, laborers, rural villagers, farmers, university students and health professionals, each with his or her own exhaustive narrative of how frustrated attempts to seek redress from the state led to, as a last resort, street marches or blockades.2 The protesters’ complaints vary but all relate to socioeconomic grievances, such as environmental pollution caused by extractive industries, poor labor conditions, unfair trade competition and the lack of basic necessities like health and education in rural villages and urban ghettos.
When Alan García became president of Peru in 2006, he began calling these protesters ‘terrorists,’ and soon the press began to cover more cases of violent, sometimes fatal, clashes with the police.3 After a year in office, García issued a new draconian law that, in effect, shields the police and the military from prosecution for lethal force used in the course of ‘fulfilling their duty’ in suppressing street protests.4 This decision was made despite ongoing criminal trials for human rights violations committed during Peru's twenty-year internal armed conflict (1980–2000) between the state's armed forces and insurgent groups. Such impunity measures suggest the repetition of history despite the country's ongoing transitional justice efforts.
New cycles of violence and repression in countries lauded for their transitional justice projects push us to ask whether these types of projects could do more to assure the goals of postconflict recovery, such as reconciliation and sustainable peace.5 With that question in mind, I explore how transitional justice mechanisms like TCs can better contribute to longer-term processes of political and economic transformation.6 This discussion builds on the notion that the aim of prevention motivates the constantly evolving transitional justice movement, as reflected in the frequently invoked motto nunca más (never again), originally the name of Argentina's TC report. Prevention also embodies the principle of ‘nonrepetition’ – the foundation of international human rights law.7 I argue that the overarching aim of prevention rests on the basic premise that postconflict recovery entails a holistic approach that should include economic, political and social structural reform. This approach potentially can be spearheaded by transitional mechanisms like TCs but ultimately requires long-term political will, vision and commitment.
In terms of prevention, the theory of transitional justice already aims for sustainable peace by seeking to establish the rule of law, democracy and a culture of rights8 through a full range of judicial and nonjudicial mechanisms designed to address legacies of mass atrocities.9 Typically, the checklist of such remedies includes prosecuting perpetrators of human rights violations, revealing the truth about past crimes, providing victims/survivors with reparations and reforming governmental institutions.10 In this way, transitional justice holds the dual purpose of being forward- and backward-looking; its activities seek to clarify, expose and come to terms with repressive, violent and abusive pasts, as well as aim to promote peace and democracy in the future.11
Until now, however, the concept of justice underpinning these activities has related exclusively to accountability and redress for violations of civil and political rights.12 What about redress for historical inequality and violations of economic, social and cultural rights that often pre-date, run concurrently with and follow episodes of political violence? I would argue that even with trials and reparations, if economic and social inequalities go unaddressed and the grievances of the poor and marginalized go unheard, we are left with only uncertain guarantees of nonrepetition. It is like treating the symptoms while leaving the underlying illness to fester.
With this in mind, we need to explore how transitional justice can expand its concept of justice to address what anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer terms ‘structural violence,’ referring to the entrenched socioeconomic conditions that cause poverty, exclusion and inequality.13 In this sense, the concept of social justice folds into the general definition of transitional justice.14 To accomplish this end, I propose that TCs expand their mandates to analyze violations of not only civil and political rights but also economic, social and cultural rights. They could include any findings of violations of all of these fundamental rights in their final reports and recommendations for how a state should redress them.15
This mandate expansion would serve numerous purposes. First, it would allow TCs to treat the root causes of political violence as more than just ‘historical context’ for the study of civil and political violations, framing them in terms of state obligations that were not fulfilled and thus require redress. Second, this approach would increase attention to the oft-forgotten tasks of institutional reform and development in transitional justice processes. Third, it would help bridge parallel but rarely intersecting post-recovery initiatives, making reform efforts more efficient and cohesive. Fourth, it would help strengthen growing recognition of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as the right to development, and thus provide local actors with a platform to legitimize their own lobbying efforts for socioeconomic reform. With regard to the last purpose, the rights-based approach would allow grievances to be channeled through democratic mechanisms, not rejected as disruptive and subversive and thus made susceptible to repression.
Before discussing my proposal, I offer a brief historical overview of TCs within postconflict recovery schemes in order to suggest the significance, possible challenges and necessity of this proposed expansion in transitional justice work. I also discuss the present-day consequences of not viewing socioeconomic conditions as state failure to ensure minimum living conditions. States leave the structural reasons for violence in place through more-of-the-same development policy, encouraging economic growth without adopting redistributive policies to assure human development. In this way, old grievances become new ones, sparking renewed conflict.
Innovations in development theory are helping to shift traditional approaches to postconflict recovery. I discuss how this trend recently began to influence the UN's peace-building operations through what I call a ‘development–security nexus’ approach. I explore ways to build a bridge between the UN's work and that of transitional justice, as they both relate to postconflict recovery. Although the UN recently highlighted the link between its own peace-building work and transitional justice, it did so in terms of criminal trials and reparation. I argue that it could go further to see how TCs could promote the development–security nexus. I conclude by offering some concrete suggestions of what this might look like in practice. Throughout the article, I integrate observations from my own ethnographic work on Peru's transitional justice experience since 2002, as well as comparative experiences from other countries that also opted for a TC. Ultimately, I propose that TCs can set political agendas for future social justice reforms aimed at true conflict prevention.
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Deeper Truths: TCs Delving into the Causes of Violent Conflict |
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As official investigatory bodies, TCs hold the potential to ask not only what happened during periods of political violence and armed conflict but also why the violence occurred at all. The ‘why’ question opens the possibility of addressing, and ultimately redressing, the broader socioeconomic root causes of conflict that, if ignored, hold the potential to spark new cycles of violence. At their inception, however, TCs tended to interpret their mandates more narrowly, often limiting their study to crimes that constitute violations of civil and political human rights and overlooking, avoiding or otherwise ignoring the socioeconomic causes of conflict.16
For instance, the TC reports of Argentina (1984), Chile (1991) and El Salvador (1993) present brief procedural explanations of political polarization, such as repressive state apparatuses, corrupt judiciaries, faulty rule of law and other institutional type weaknesses, which contributed to the continuation of violence. These Commissions failed to delve into the underlying structural causes of the conflict, particularly political clashes over socioeconomic ideologies. Yet, the ‘dirty wars’ of all these countries consisted of authoritarian repression and state terror aimed at suppressing oppositional voices that spoke about what dissidents perceived to be socioeconomic inequalities.17 Anthropologist Richard Wilson speculates that the Cold War made impossible any inquiry into the grievances that motivated the insurgent movements of these countries, given the high political price of appearing too sympathetic to their communist causes.18 Similarly, historian Greg Grandin offers an insightful analysis of the restraint exercised by both Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) and Chile's National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (CNVR) by revealing that they feared intoning ‘moral pardons’ or somehow excusing or justifying the violence. Instead, the CNVR hid behind its mandate, indicating that while it recognized the country's crisis had ‘deep roots, of a socioeconomic character,’ its mandate prevented it from exploring those issues.19
Undoubtedly influenced by a changing geopolitical context, later TCs showed less self-restraint. The TCs of Guatemala and Peru, for example, did not frame their analysis in terms of violations of economic and social rights, but they did explore historical context as a cause of the wars in their countries. For instance, the 1999 final report of Guatemala's Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH) analyzes the systemic causes of state violence, including economic exploitation, racism and political exclusion. It includes statistical evidence of the country's health, education, literacy and nutritional indicators to show the extreme social inequality that has made the country among the most unjust in the world despite an abundance of national wealth. Its first volume, on the ‘causes and origins’ of Guatemala's armed conflict, goes back hundreds of years to the Spanish colonial culture that subordinated the Mayan population in order to effect economic advancement. Structural inequality resulted in ongoing cycles of violence, often sparked by popular masses protesting for economic, political, social or cultural change, which provoked state repression aimed at maintaining social control. In this way, Grandin contends, ‘political violence was thus a direct expression of structural violence.’ A ‘structural analysis’ allowed the CEH to be more than just an ‘unreflective instrument of nation building,’ by acknowledging that the roots of the violence ‘lay in the clash between those who fought for a more equitable society and those who defended, with increasing viciousness, the established order.’20
Similarly, the Peruvian TRC offered a more in-depth analysis of the socio- economic causes of its internal armed conflict between state armed forces and the Maoist insurgent group, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path, or SL). While the Peru TRC showed more caution in directly critiquing the ‘established economic order,’ as did its Guatemalan counterpart, it nevertheless described how SL recruited marginalized discontents for its bloody campaign.21 That is, SL's utopian promises of communism justified violent revolution in the minds of the poor and excluded, who lived in rural communities historically abandoned and ignored by the state. Significantly, SL failed to infiltrate communities with more state presence, which provided a minimum standard of living in terms of health, education and security.22
While the Peruvian TRC report avoids saying that poverty caused the conflict, it speaks of an ‘evident relation’ between poverty and social exclusion and political violence that ‘ignited’ and then became the backdrop of the war.23 It points to the link between unequal distribution of political and symbolic power and unequal distribution of riches. Its statistical findings communicate that the war ran along class and ethic lines, indicating that 75 percent of the estimated 70,000 killed came from the poorest regions of the country, being mostly indigenous farmers with minimal education and a native tongue other than Spanish. Thus, those most affected by conflict are often the same as those suffering dire poverty and inequality.
The TCs of Peru and Guatemala provide evidence to support a now recognized phenomenon: poverty and exclusion can trigger armed conflict and political violence. Mac Darrow and Amparo Tomas lament, ‘History has witnessed time and again the disenchantment of the politically and socially disenfranchised boiling over into cycles of violent action and reaction.’24 Likewise, Farmer writes,
Rights violations are ... symptoms of deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm.25
Thus, the decontextualized approach, like that taken by the TCs of Chile and Argentina, ends up presenting a diagnosis of human rights violations ‘abstracted’ from ‘the dynamics of social power and conflict.’26 The more recent approach taken by the Guatemalan and Peruvian TCs provides compelling empirical evidence, based on raw data from thousands of testimonies, of a causal connection between violence and structural inequalities.
The findings of the latter help inform current debates arising from a growing body of academic literature on the causes of violence. One line of inquiry into this topic contends that violence flows from persistent socioeconomic inequalities, coupled with a lack of effective channels for redress.27 Social scientists argue that ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ and ‘spoilers’ tap into the frustration of populations whose historic socioeconomic grievances largely have been ignored by the state.28 As former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote in 2001:
The proximate cause of conflict may be an outbreak of public disorder or a protest over a particular incident, but the root cause may be, for example, socio-economic inequities and inequalities, systematic ethnic discrimination, denial of human rights, disputes over political participation or long-standing grievances over land and other resource allocation.29
Thus, even if it is still debated whether poverty constitutes a direct cause of political violence, the consensus seems to be that poverty is at least a contributing factor to conflict and ‘a symptom of the decline of a state's capacity to protect and provide for its citizens.’30
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More of the Same: Economic Growth Policy in Postconflict Nation Building |
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Although TCs have supported the growing consensus that violent conflict often arises from underlying socioeconomic inequalities, their findings frequently fail to affect the direction of economic policy or institutional reform. On the contrary, their countries more often than not follow the precepts of the so-called Washington Consensus, adopted by international lending institutions like the World Bank, which promotes the idea that macroeconomic growth alleviates poverty and thus social inequalities.31 With their heavy reliance on international lenders, developing nations often have implemented the neoliberal policies upon which loans are conditioned with the hope of creating the conditions for lasting peace. Thus, until recently, the dominant economic development model has meant that conflict recovery schemes focus on military intervention to keep the peace; humanitarian relief to address immediate socioeconomic needs; and macroeconomic stabilization that, at most, might include rule-of-law institutional reforms.32 Only ‘radical’ economists have tended to discuss class-based conflicts and call for more state intervention, as well as alternative models of development.33
For example, John Saul discusses how at the end of apartheid in South Africa, the black majority political party, the African National Congress, followed the global trend and implemented free market reforms as part of its recovery strategy.34 Certainly, it sought to address the consequences of prolonged political violence arising from structural inequalities based on discriminatory economic policies – a situation exposed, however minimally, during sectoral hearings of the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.35 Yet, the results of this policy made victims of apartheid into victims of neoliberalism. As Saul chillingly tells us,
A tragedy is being enacted in South Africa ... For in the teeth of high expectations arising from the successful struggle against a malignant apartheid state, a very large percentage of the population – among them many of the most desperately poor in the world – are being sacrificed on the altar of the neo-liberal logic of global capitalism.36
South Africa's experience is not confined to its geographical boundaries. Across the globe, macroeconomic reforms are failing to eliminate poverty and inequalities while enriching capital owners. With their emphasis on the decreased role of the state and minimal economic regulation, neoliberal policies lack redistributive or protective mechanisms that ensure the well-being of poor citizens. In contrast, these policies include a shrinking fiscal base that reduces public expenditure, which weakens public institutions and services.37 More-of-the-same economic development policy has meant that the social justice issues of yesterday linger in most post-TC countries.
Worse, globalization appears to have deepened poverty, inequality and social injustice in these and other countries. Yale law professor Amy Chua warns that free markets and the accumulation of wealth by a rich minority create ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing world.38 Abraham Lowenthal argues,
It is difficult, if not impossible, for governments to sustain popular backing for programs that may only slowly strengthen the aggregate economy and that seem to enrich a privileged few without providing a credible promise of broad prosperity.39
The failure to ensure that the gains of capitalism improve the well-being of all citizens results in polarization, which looms like social and economic dynamite. It is a sobering realization that this reality ultimately may undermine the work of TCs to set countries on a course of sustainable peace and reconciliation.
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Continued Grievances: Violent Protest in Postconflict Settings |
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Indeed, a quick survey of post-TC countries provides evidence of rising social conflict due to the socioeconomic inequalities exacerbated by globalization. The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa recently documented case studies of ‘urban, poor communities that have experienced, and continue to experience, conflict with the state over basic socio-economic struggles.’40 Sociologist Javier Auyero has shown that riots in Argentina over the past decade have been a response to economic structural adjustments.41 UN development workers have found that the urban street gang violence in El Salvador that often provokes state repression arises from the same underlying socioeconomic inequalities that fueled that country's war.42
Peru falls in line with this trend. From the capital of Lima, elites view the country's violence as irrational and as regression to terrorism. They rarely discuss how it may be a continuation of past violence. In this way, Peruvians may be examples of the maxim that ‘a society is condemned to repeat its mistakes if it does not learn the lessons of the past.’43 Certainly, Peru's poor are still marginalized, lacking the most basic social services and necessities despite a booming national economy. A growing anti-neoliberal sentiment threads through Peruvian protests, as local people feel deprived of the shared benefits of the neoliberal reforms instituted by former President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000).
In 1992, Fujimori's bloodless self-coup gave him almost limitless executive power to liberalize the Peruvian market through deregulation and pro-business tax schemes. Peru now stands as one of the world's top 10 countries for foreign investment in extractive activities, and boasts of an annual economic growth rate of 6 percent as one of the world's most liberal and open economies. Local communities often welcomed foreign companies in the early 1990s with the hope of improved development and well-being, only to feel frustrated by the faulty ‘trickle down’ promises by advocates of the Washington Consensus. In 2004, one tragic and emblematic case finally focused national attention on the issue: thousands of residents in the town of Llave, in the southern region of Puno, lynched their mayor on suspicion of corruption and mishandling of public funds.44 The brutal act horrified the public and revealed the extremes to which local populations will go if they do not find peaceful ways to address their discontent. Soon after, and just a year after the TRC published its final report in 2003, the Defensoría del Pueblo (the Peruvian ombudsman) formed the Unit on Social Conflict, whose monthly reports showed a steady increase in conflicts between the state and communities.45
The 2006 presidential elections in Peru provided the clearest barometer of this national crisis. In the first round, the nationalist candidate, Ollanta Humala, won 80 percent of the vote in the poorest regions of the country, where Peru's conflict hit hardest and where much of the violence reported by the Defensoría occurred. The act of voting for Humala took on symbolic purchase against the country's neoliberal reforms, which had managed to pull the nation from the World Bank's poorest nations list but failed to reduce the economic gap between classes. Thus, the election served as a wake-up call, and the local press covered what became known as Peru's ‘bomba de tiempo’ (time bomb). Newly elected President García accused the outgoing president, Alejandro Toledo, of forgetting 70 percent of the country, thus ‘sembrando minas’ (laying mines) for future conflict.
Amid this controversy, very little public space was devoted to the Peruvian TRC's analysis of the underlying socioeconomic causes of the war. The Commission's findings still have not been widely disseminated and discussed because of the society's resilient fear of terrorism. García, himself implicated in human rights violations during his first term in office (1985–1990), taps into this societal fear. Even if protesters assemble peacefully with legitimate claims, he accuses them of belonging to ‘anti-development’ factions (read ‘terrorists’). He encourages a new intolerance for public dissent and an unwillingness to open democratic channels for resolving socioeconomic claims.
In view of this national crisis, Peru's Congress requested that the Defensoría conduct a special study on the extractive industry, which generates significant community clashes with the state.46 The resulting report offers general observations about the renewed cycle of violence, which continues to grow in intensity and cause ‘the loss of life, grave injuries, destruction of private and public property and the paralyzing of investment.’47 The Defensoría provides decisive insight into the complex causes of the rising social conflict, discussing the high level of distrust people have of the government's will to protect fundamental socioeconomic rights (to health, to employment), as well as feelings of historical exclusion that build resentment of third-party foreigners, whom many Peruvians perceive as having become unjustly wealthy on their ancestral lands. Inadequate distribution of benefits means disappointed expectations for sustainable development. The report concludes that the accumulation of unattended frustration leads to the escalation of violence.
It is perplexing that the alarming trend of increasing violence over socioeconomic conditions occurs even in a country whose truth commission final report discusses the root causes of political violence. Why does this compelling information have minimal influence on national economic policy choices and the government's response to the grievances of poor citizens? I argue that the Peruvian TRC's analysis did not evoke the type of persuasive compulsion that comes from declaring that state actions are giving rise to human rights violations. The consequences of the two different approaches is subtle: presenting socioeconomic root causes of conflict as historical context leaves policy change to the discretion of political leaders, while presenting them as rights violations makes redress and reform a political imperative.48 Countries transitioning to democracy worry about their legitimacy in the international community and react to accusations of human rights violations, even if just to avoid international scrutiny.49 In addition, the TRC missed an opportunity to educate the public that the underlying grievances of the insurgency existed because of violations of basic rights, thus going beyond pure political ideology. Still pending is a national conversation about why hundreds of Peruvians were willing to take up arms to change an economic system that had failed to improve their families’ and own socioeconomic situation.50
If TCs present the socioeconomic roots of violence in terms of human rights violations, they could better set the tone of postconflict recovery. I in no way wish to suggest that the onus for a sea change in national policy and large-scale structural reform rests on TCs alone. Instead, I take a more modest approach, suggesting that TCs can help initiate a longer-term reform process by creating the possibility for viewing underlying socioeconomic conditions not as unchangeable facts of life but as consequences of conscious policy decisions that fail to protect fundamental rights.51
Certainly, the Peruvians’ current rejection of neoliberal policies is occurring in a changed geopolitical context, one no longer informed by the superpower ideologies that made questioning the dominant economic policy suspect or subversive. Yet, in Peru, contemporary demands for social justice do resemble those made just over a decade ago, when calls for social justice and socialist reforms prompted vicious reprisal and ‘dirty wars’ in Latin America. In the absence of a critical national dialogue on how these conditions constitute violations of basic human rights, political leaders still may manipulate popular opinion to reject the grievances of the poor, marginalizing them as terrorists and even criminalizing their protest.
To protect against this tendency, TC reports and recommendations that include the economic, social and cultural rights framework could serve as important tools for local actors. Demands for social justice would be perceived as legitimate, sensible and humane calls on a state to fulfill its international obligations and carry forward a reform agenda. National grassroots movements, meanwhile, would contribute to a global effort to contest the dominant neoliberal development model. This symbiotic national–international relationship promises to cause a major shift in our global thinking on development.
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Contributing to a Tipping Point in Development Theory |
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We are at a critical time in history, in which TCs hold great potential to contribute to the sea change in development theory already underway. Specifically, the neoliberal model no longer enjoys unconditional deference. We stand on the brink of a tipping point, where a more humane approach to development may finally enjoy global acceptance.
This momentum began because of a combination of factors. First, a cadre of eminent economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, began to criticize ‘free market fundamentalists.’52 Even John Williamson, the creator of the Washington Consensus, began to concede that the model had flaws.53 Second, a growing global grassroots anti-neoliberal movement began contesting the assertions made by international institutions and governments that free markets would improve the well-being of all people, thereby deradicalizing the idea that capitalism should be critiqued.54 Third, the ‘right to development’ movement grew, especially as it was integrated into a larger human rights network that sought to increase recognition of economic, social and cultural rights, which the Cold War climate had relegated to ‘second-generation’ status.55 The rights-based approach offers an alternative legal framework and counterideology to hegemonic economic models, especially in that it converts development into a social justice issue.56 The new understanding is that even if economic growth is necessary, it is not sufficient to reduce poverty and inequalities, and thus to prevent conflicts.57 Rather, something more needs to happen, such as well-planned and executed redistributive policies that ensure a state meets the basic needs of all its citizens.58
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The Security–Development Nexus in UN Peace-building Operations |
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This growing international movement recently has begun to influence postconflict recovery and reconstruction schemes in which transitional justice mechanisms generally apply. Most notably, the UN began to contemplate the role of development theory in its ‘peace-building’ activities, whose origins lie in the end of the Cold War. Initially, the UN exercised the same self-restraint as early TCs, perhaps because of the proximity of the Cold War. It rarely addressed the socioeconomic causes of conflict in the 1990s – an angle that would take a decade to gain general institutional support.59
In 2000, the so-called Brahimi Report recommended moving away from a model of pure military intervention for UN peace-keeping operations toward an integrated approach that recognizes peace is more than just the absence of war.60 Significantly, the report promotes a ‘conflict prevention lens’ as the ‘less costly option’ because it treats the causes and not just the symptoms of war.61 The report signifies a turning point in the mainstreaming of the concept of prevention in peace-building operations, as noted in recent UN Security Council resolutions that create a shared goal with transitional justice.62
With the new millennium, the UN secretary-general began to issue decisive reports that further clarified the link between development and security. Just months before 9/11, Annan posed what in retrospect appears an ominous question: ‘Why is conflict prevention still so seldom practiced, and why do we so often fail when there is a clear potential for a preventive strategy to succeed?’63 Indeed, following the tragic events of 9/11, interest in conflict prevention and development increased, especially as weak or collapsed states came to be viewed as sanctuaries for leaders of terrorist groups who could ‘exploit [these] dysfunctional environment[s].’64
Annan voiced concern about renewed violence in countries with peace agreements, noting that within five years roughly half of all countries that emerge from war lapse into violence. He pointed to ‘a gaping hole in the United Nations institutional machinery,’ which allows a system that fails to help countries transition from war to lasting peace.65 Ultimately, he proposed moving away from the reactive mentalities and practices adopted during the Cold War and toward a ‘culture of prevention’ that requires ‘the deep-rooted socioeconomic, cultural, environmental, institutional and other structural causes that often underlie the immediate political symptoms of conflicts’ to be addressed. This approach incorporates short- and long-term methods that encompass political, diplomatic, humanitarian, human rights, developmental, institutional and other measures by the international community, in cooperation with local actors. In this way, he argued, ‘conflict prevention and sustainable and equitable development are mutually reinforcing activities.’66
In 2003, Annan convened the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change,
tasked with examining the major threats and challenges the world faces in the broad field of peace and security, including economic and social issues insofar as they relate to peace and security, and making recommendations for the elements of a collective response.67
The resulting report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, bolstered the evolving security–development agenda.68 Soon after, in 2005, the UN created the Peacebuilding Commission to help ensure the sustainability of peace once attained, melding postconflict reconstruction and conflict prevention.
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Freedom as Development |
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As the UN strove to link security with development in traditional peace-keeping operations, a parallel stream of action promoted alternative development models that opened the door to ask the question: ‘What kind of development is best in war-torn societies.’69 The concept of ‘human security’ has redefined security to mean more than protecting against external military risks. It includes ‘safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression, and protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patters of daily lives.’70
This expansive view of development can be seen in Annan's In Larger Freedom report, published in anticipation of a summit of world leaders in 2005 to review progress made since the UN Millennium Declaration. The report articulates a progressive vision of development as ‘freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom to live in dignity.’ Here, Annan establishes a now well-recognized triad:
In an increasingly interconnected world, progress in the areas of development, security and human rights must go hand in hand. There will be no development without security and no security without development. And both development and security also depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law.71
This definition of development aims for all people to have
the freedom to choose the kind of lives they would like to live, the access to the resources that would make those choices meaningful and the security to ensure that they can be enjoyed in peace.72
This approach echoes the pivotal work of Amartya Sen and his idea of a ‘capability approach,’ which refers to ‘the capabilities to realize certain freedoms that are themselves fundamentally valuable for minimal human dignity.’73 Sen's work, which has greatly influenced the UN's Human Development Report, reinforces the idea that states have a positive duty to assure core minimum standards for all citizens. It also recognizes the indivisibility of all rights, as reflected in the preamble of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR):
The ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights.
The indivisibility principle makes it difficult, and perhaps futile, to scrutinize conflict situations without looking at the spectrum of rights violations – a perspective that supports my proposal that TCs expand their mandates. In this way, the human rights-based approach to development recognizes asymmetries of power and the phenomenon of ‘elite capture’ (the economic benefits of growth going to few), as well as that
the distribution of assets and capabilities does not occur by accident, but is the product of conscious policy choices and political and social struggle. The quest for equitable redistribution of overall gains is a political as well as legal imperative.74
Street protesters recognize that inequitable socioeconomic policy arises from human design; that is why they demand that their governments embrace new models of sustainable development.
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Merging the Fields of Conflict Recovery and Conflict Prevention |
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With the confluence of fields in postconflict recovery, a still modest flurry of recent commentary discusses how transitional justice supports the UN's peace-building operations. Indeed, the former executive secretary of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Paul van Zyl, observes, ‘It is somewhat surprising that so little analysis has been devoted to the intersection between transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding.’75 This lack of coordination began to change in 2004 when Annan published his report on transitional justice, which constituted a watershed moment in terms of international recognition of the field.76 In In Larger Freedom, Annan refers to the 2004 report in pointing out the general lack of coordination and planning among the various approaches to postconflict recovery, which results in ‘often piecemeal, slow and ill-suited’ activities for the ultimate goal of sustainable peace.77 This opinion echoes an earlier call for coordination in which he explains,
All these tasks – humanitarian, military, political, social, and economic – are interconnected, and the people engaged in them need to work closely together. We cannot expect lasting success in any of them unless we pursue all of them at once as part of a single coherent strategy.78
Academics and practitioners are making similar calls for coordination.79 Along these lines, van Zyl poses various research questions on how transitional justice may contribute to postconflict peace building, viewing the two fields as complementary.80 As may be expected, these calls implicitly take as their starting point the premise that transitional justice contributes to the peace-building paradigm by addressing and redressing grievances that arise from violations of civil and political rights. As an alternative, I will propose ways in which transitional justice mechanisms like TCs can contribute to general postconflict recovery efforts as they relate to the socioeconomic roots of conflict. Where relevant, I also suggest how the new development–security nexus discourse may support national transitional justice experiences. Space does not allow me to unpack fully each of the themes that emerge, but I present a preliminary discussion with the hope of inspiring further inquiry and research.
Diagnosing the Problem
TCs offer a preliminary diagnostic tool of the socioeconomic conditions before, during and after conflict that can set reform agendas for longer-term conflict-recovery efforts. Van Zyl points out that ‘development of a post-conflict peacebuilding strategy must be based on a rigorous examination of the causes, nature and effect of the prior conflict.’81 As in Guatemala and Peru, TCs, in addition to presenting individual cases of human rights violations, can explain the structural and institutional causes of these abuses. Ultimately, these grievances point to the failure of states to provide a minimum standard of living for all citizens, which could be presented as a violation of economic, social and cultural rights.
The recent experience of East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) provides an exceptional example of this legalistic diagnostic approach. CAVR operated for three years as an independent statutory body investigating the political conflict of 1974–2005. Its mandate included study of ‘the context, causes, antecedents, motives and perspectives which led to the violations.’82 Yet, it went beyond looking at civil and political rights abuses to analyze these conditions within a framework of economic and social rights violations. In its report, CAVR not only recognizes the brutal violation of civil and political rights but also notes that ‘the impact of the conditions in which [the population] lived, while often less remarked on, was equally damaging and possibly more long-lasting.’83 It refers to numerous international treaties, including the ICESCR and the Fourth Geneva Convention's obligation that an occupying power protects civilians’ social and economic circumstances. The report summarizes the types of violations that rested on the discriminatory fashion of failing to ‘meet the basic needs of the population for food, shelter and essential medicines’ and caused ‘their economic and social situations to deteriorate.’84 CAVR has found that Indonesia failed to raise the well-being of the East Timorese people and instead prioritized private interests. Thus, despite significant overall macroeconomic growth, the country now lags ‘well behind that of even the poorest Indonesian provinces.’85
The report discusses the problematic outcomes of free market policy choices, finding that ‘the discriminatory use of resources served to create new divisions and to entrench existing ones.’86 The report specifically refers to the freedom approach, which now figures as part of the development–security nexus discourse, citing the ‘freedom from fear and want’ phrase in the preamble of the ICESCR.87 In this vein, it cautions that the ‘long-lasting impacts’ of the economic and social conditions that, ‘in many cases, continue to this day’ are ‘impediments to reconciliation and need to be addressed within that context.’88 It will be important to follow how this report influences local politics, and if it serves as a platform for national protesters seeking to address socioeconomic grievances.
Promoting Macro Reconciliation Processes that Include Social Justice
With a broader diagnostic approach, TCs set the stage for national reconciliation projects to take on macro dimensions. While prominently stated as an aim of TCs and the subject of extensive academic writing, the concept of reconciliation in postconflict settings has yet to be fully defined or understood.89 Often the topic of reconciliation conjures up images of South Africa's experience of ‘spiritual reconciliation,’ which encouraged victims to forgive perpetrators.90 Stuart Wilson writes,
Reconciliation can be a transient phenomenon, and to suggest that one hearing is enough to effect it in any strong sense is wishful thinking, especially when, as often must have been the case, the torturer returned to a comfortable white South African lifestyle and the victims returned to a squatter's shack, a township house or domestic worker's flat ...91
Similarly, Susan Dwyer contends that reconciliation in the wake of atrocity requires ‘the credibility that can be established only by implementation of social and economic programs that concretely address the substantive injustices’ of the past. She goes on to ask,
How much reconciliation can be achieved if in post-apartheid South Africa, for example, whites admit that their economic, social, and political status was based on a morally bankrupt system, but then refuse to accept sharply redistributive taxation?92
In this way, the path to reconciliation would include mending (or creating) the social-economic-political conditions that bolster the foundational social contract needed for stable peace.
Alternatively, the Peruvian TRC sought to promote a model of ‘political reconciliation’ that includes efforts to reintegrate the formerly marginalized – the majority of victims/survivors – as equal citizens to contribute to ‘democratic consolidation, the return of faith in the future and to lay the foundation of a new social pact.’93 Unlike individualized and interpersonal micro versions of reconciliation, this approach seeks wider societal and political change processes.94 This macro reconciliation approach acknowledges the need for addressing the type of endemic inequality that motivates the development–security discourse. Robert Orr writes,
Enabling disenfranchised groups to begin to play a role in determining the country's direction and mobilizing them to defend a new peaceful order not only facilitates democratic development but also provides the means to progressively squeeze armed combatants, warlords, and other spoilers out of the picture.95
This approach directs reform efforts to go beyond just revamping institutional structures like the judiciary and law enforcement agencies to including more fundamental questions on economic and social policy. As explained by Stiglitz,
We recognize today that there is a ‘social contract’ that binds citizens together, and with their government. When government policies abrogate that social contract, citizens may not honor their ‘contracts’ with each other, or with the government. Maintaining that social contract is particularly important, and difficult, in the midst of the social upheavals that so frequently accompany the development transformation.96
The term ‘contract’ no longer serves as pure metaphor in a rights framework, however. Here, TCs contribute to the notion of ‘broken social contracts’ by spelling out how socioeconomic conditions violate rights. These types of recommendations sketch a roadmap for more profound transformation by informing future political and legal decisions made in postconflict settings.
Of course, these recommendations do not guarantee action on the part of the government. For example, the Guatemalan CEH elaborated policy recommendations that included a progressive tax system and increased state spending on human necessities, in addition to other unfulfilled political, legal and economic reforms that could be found in the peace accords but remained dormant. Similarly, the Peruvian TRC realized that reconciliation involves ‘concrete solutions for profound problems’ that arise at every level of development: the ethnic and racial, social, economic, juridical, educational, sanitary, security and communication, among others.97 The failure of these countries to implement the TC recommendations no doubt has various explanations, with the lack of political will being among the top few. Ultimately, the success of prevention depends on the
extent to which local authorities are willing and able to take difficult but necessary political and economic decisions and to participate in the establishment of processes and mechanisms to manage internal disputes and pre-empt violence or the reemergence of conflict.98
I contend that had the TCs made these recommendations as part of a rights-based analysis, they would have left national groups a powerful lobbying tool to challenge the government's inaction or resistance.99 For example, in Peru, victims/survivors and sympathetic civil servants rely on the authority of the Peruvian TRC to support and legitimize their demands that the state fully implement the recommended reparations plan, Plan Integral de Reparaciones (PIR), framing their arguments in terms of rights.
In addition, TCs could ‘generate national awareness of the insecurities, marginalisation and victimisation of minorities as well as offer policy proposals to ensure their rights are appropriately protected.’100 Meanwhile, those who advocate structural change would enjoy more protection from persecution because they no longer could be viewed as subversive or ‘terrorist’ when they call on the state to take a more proactive role in ‘regulating the distribution of power and resources and the peaceful settlement of grievances.’101 Human rights language supports victims/survivors who frame their demands for development as social justice.102
Presentation of the socioeconomic roots of conflict in terms of rights helps to expand the notion of justice within the transitional justice paradigm, making social justice a legitimate priority in postconflict recovery. The responsibility is put back on states to address the original socioeconomic injustices suffered by most victims/survivors of political violence, as a rights-based approach treats development as a matter of state obligation and of citizens’ rights rather than as subject to discretion or a gesture of charity.103 Instead of voluntary international humanitarian relief, postconflict reconstruction would entail national governments creating comprehensive and sustainable approaches to development. Moreover, unlike traditional peace-building initiatives, transitional justice is usually wholly national in origin and function. Thus, postconflict recovery work would be decentralized, with greater likelihood of ensuring lasting peace.
Restorative Justice as Reparations and Development
TCs could issue recommendations for development. They thus would help overcome the great difficulty of separating the causes of victimization when violations of human rights arise from both historically unjust social and economic conditions and grave political violence. The Peruvian TRC's comprehensive diagnosis of the psychosocial, sociopolitical and socioeconomic harms caused by the conflict reveal that Peru's war left widespread personal and material loss, which only worsened already dismal socioeconomic conditions.104
While interviewing victims/survivors, the Peruvian TRC found that they requested redress for their current needs, which arose from inequitable social and economic conditions and not necessarily the war. They demanded equal access to education, attention to health for their whole family and opportunities for microbusinesses, among other practical solutions to concerns of everyday survival.105 They expressed the same long-standing grievances that the Commission blamed for sparking the insurgency.106 These are the conditions that they wanted fixed in order to improve their well-being – a precondition for the new social pact envisioned by the Commission.
The TRC struggled to distinguish the ‘damage’ and ‘harm’ caused by the war from that caused by historical conditions.107 Its PIR is geared specifically to responding to civil and political rights violations, yet it implicitly moves toward repairing all rights violations because it aims to help victims/survivors ‘recuperate mental and physical health, reconstruct social support networks and strengthen their capacities for personal and social development.’ It aims for the ‘autonomous development of the victims to reconstruct their individual and collective life plan ("proyecto de vida") that was cut off by the conflict.’10
Yet, as the Peruvian government now attempts to implement collective reparations, controversy has emerged because victims/survivors complain that the state is merely fulfilling its preexisting obligation to guarantee economic and social rights and development. Perhaps if TCs diagnose a state's failure to provide core minimum socioeconomic conditions as rights violations, then subsequent development would be perceived (and would be presented) as fulfilling these social justice claims. Thus, the tensions arising from the reparation versus development debate would be alleviated, as the government would seek to redress the full spectrum of rights violations and thus serve the overriding justice component promoted by transitional justice. This approach also would support the UN peace-building agenda by raising the profile of the right to development.
Instituting Participatory Mechanisms: Empowering Victims to Become Citizens
By promoting and strengthening participatory mechanisms, TCs help address conditions of historical exclusion that contribute to political marginalization. This approach supports alternative development theories that require beneficiaries to participate in matters that directly affect their well-being. Certainly, the right to participation underscores development theory.108 For example, the World Bank's Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook now calls for ‘the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives.’109 In its Voices of the Poor, the World Bank underscores the importance of participation, finding that poor citizens think that the lack of well-being relates to the psychological experience of lacking voice, power and independence more than to the anxiety of meeting their basic material needs.110
This distinction could explain why violence erupts in some poor communities and not in others. Poverty coupled with social and political exclusion underscores frustration, which may turn into violence, especially under undemocratic, overcentralized and authoritarian governments that let the grievances of the politically excluded go unheard and unaddressed.111 Yet, Darrow and Tomas clarify that ‘participation, to be considered effective, must ultimately be characterized by a genuine capacity to influence economic and political agendas.’112
Thus, postconflict recovery schemes must institute pathways for empowerment that include the strengthening of human capacity. TCs could jumpstart this empowerment process by offering the first official opportunity to institute inclusive democratic dialogues through their testimony-taking process. Here, official spaces open ‘for previously marginalized or silenced populations to share their stories.’113 This experience can contribute to political empowerment for the traditionally excluded.114 In addition, TCs could include recommendations for strengthening democratic participatory mechanisms.115 Consensus counsels that communities and victims
must be consulted on any plans for societal reconstruction and must be heard in meaningful ways. The importance of asking victims cannot be stressed enough ... If a tribunal is to be for victims, it also needs, at least in part, to be by them.116
Broad-based participation utilizes local knowledge to ensure the most efficient allocation of resources, while ‘maximizing ownership and sustainability of development processes and outcomes.’117 The Peruvian TRC spearheaded this inclusive approach by convoking victims/survivors to participate in the development of the PIR and recommending that they be included in its implementation.
Here, van Zyl recognizes the value of consolidating democracy as ‘a vital component of any post-conflict peacebuilding agenda’ because ‘democracies are better placed to distribute resources and deal with internal grievances in a manner that avoids conflict and human rights abuse.’118 Along these lines, Stiglitz has noted that participation not only resolves disputes of competing interests but also assures greater acceptance of reforms and a sense of ownership.119
Similarly, the UN Development Programme includes participation in its definition of good governance, explaining that it ‘encompasses the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and resolve their differences.’120 TCs could recommend that a state create democratic channels for the voices of poor citizens, which could lead to corrective redistributive measures that address the inequalities produced by free market reforms in postconflict recovery settings.
In the end, participatory mechanisms strengthen the aim of prevention. As Muna Ndulo succinctly puts it,
One cannot successfully lead an insurgency against a government that is democratic, strong and effective and meets the basic social and economic needs of its people. It stands to reason that recruitment to the cause of the insurgency will be nearly impossible when people are happy and believe that warfare is not the only way to draw attention to their grievance or to create change.121
Spoilers are neutralized by ‘solutions that mitigate tensions at the mass level.’122
For example, the Peruvian TRC has encouraged the continuation of decentralization efforts initiated by Toledo, which include a new participatory budget-making process designed to strength the ability of local government to use transparent and equitable means to dedicate public monies to human and sustainable development. This is meant to strengthen state–society relations by consolidating democratic institutions and building citizenship. Interestingly, local communities began to use the participatory budget process to lobby for the implementation of the PIR, particularly its provisions for collective reparations that resemble development. This progress has stalled under the leadership of García, however, which suggests once again that when framed in terms of discretionary recommendations, lasting transformation is left to the whims of political will.
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Conclusion |
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As a relatively new field, transitional justice continues to grow as it responds to the complexity and nuances of postconflict recovery. Given its growing influence, the field must see how it may expand better to promote the important goals of sustainable peace and conflict resolution. In her analysis of the evolution of transitional justice, Ruti Teitel confirms that TCs have tended to adopt a historical view of justice, ‘rather than a broader structural reform project.’ She comments that transitional responses have ‘tended to miss the broader dimensions associated with the bipolar power relations of the last decades, as well as with economic and political globalization.’ She continues,
Contemporary transitional justice is being renegotiated at the same time as debates are being waged on globalization-related economic reforms. The coincidence of these developments makes the increase in the disparities associated with the free market economy readily apparent, even as there has been an increasing resort to transitional justice discourse. Whatever reform transitional justice-seeking implies, it is limited and determinate, and couches the economic question in terms of human restitution for known past losses. Post-Cold War transitional justice has, in large part, displaced broader reform projects, and appears to represent a move away from progressive politics.123
Her observation compels us to look at how transitional justice mechanisms may begin better to accommodate socioeconomic issues so as to meet more effectively the challenges of preventing new cycles of violence. Certainly, the UN has helped create new momentum for the idea that the most sensible, rational and efficient policy embraces development.
These types of radical shifts in national socioeconomic policies may occur only in a tipping point-like fashion. The changes are most likely to occur through the sustained and coordinated development of the various streams of national and international contestation discussed above. Every effort to challenge the predominant economic model counts, including the work of TCs. TCs can help to raise awareness and influence policy in order to ameliorate the harsh consequences of neoliberalism by reinforcing the principle that a state must provide minimum care for all its people. In the end, the goal of conflict prevention – assuring the mental and physical well-being and integrity of thousands of people – motivates this approach. Even if difficult, the vision of transforming vicious circles of violence into ‘virtuous circles’ of peace is the root of the idealism that motivates our work.124
1 I thank the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where I worked on preliminary drafts of this article while a member, and the United States Institute of Peace for supporting the study that led to some observations shared in this article. All opinions and any errors are mine alone. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. 
2 See the award-winning documentary, Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, Mining, directed by Stephanie Boyd and Ernesto Cabellos (Lima: Guarango Film and Video, 2007).
3 María Elena Castillo, ‘Un muerto y nueve heridos en las protestas de Andahuaylas,’ La Republica, 17 July 2007.
4 ‘Seguridad ante el crimen,’ El Peruano, 24 August 2007.
5 I use the term ‘postconflict’ more broadly than war so as to include situations in which the state uses repressive measures against dissidents and opponents, such as occurred in the ‘dirty wars’ of Latin America. For a discussion on sustainable peace and reconciliation as aims of transitional justice, see, Bronwyn Anne Leebaw, ‘The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,’ Human Rights Quarterly 30(1) (2008): 95–118.
6 As explained by Juan Méndez, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice, transitional justice has become ‘a sort of term of art to describe how we help societies leave behind a legacy of massive and systematic human rights violations and start on the path to a more humane dispensation of rights and a more democratic society.’ Juan Méndez, ‘Lou Henkin, Transitional Justice, and the Prevention of Genocide,’ Columbia Human Rights Law Review 38(3) (2007): 479.
7 Lisa J. Laplante, ‘Bringing Effective Remedies Home: The Inter-American Human Rights System, Reparations, and the Duty of Prevention,’ Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 22(3) (2004): 347–388.
8 Ruti G. Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998).
9 Neil J. Kritz, ‘The Dilemmas of Transitional Justice,’ in Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes, vol. I (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995).
10 Louis Bickford, ‘Transitional Justice,’ in The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, ed. Dinah Shelton (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004).
11 Paul van Zyl, ‘Promoting Transitional Justice in Post-Conflict Societies,’ in Security Governance in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, ed. Alan Bryden and Heiner Hänggi (Geneva: Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2005).
12 Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena, ed., Transitional Justice in the Twenty-first Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
13 Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
14 Commonly accepted notions of justice already include retributive and corrective justice (criminal trials); historical justice (truth gathering); and restorative and reparative justice (reparations).
15 For a fuller discussion of the goals of TCs, including reconciliation, see, Minow, supra n 8.
16 Lisa J. Laplante, ‘On the Indivisibility of Rights: Truth Commissions, Reparations, and the Right to Development,’ Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 10 (2007): 142–177.
17 Silvia Borzutzky, ‘The Politics of Impunity: The Cold War, State Terror, Trauma, Trials and Reparations in Argentina and Chile,’ Latin American Research Review 42(1) (2007): 167–185.
18 Richard Ashby Wilson, ‘Is the Legalization of Human Rights Really the Problem? Genocide in the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission,’ in The Legalisation of Human Rights: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Law, ed. Saladin Meckled-García and Ba
ak Çali (New York: Routledge, 2005).
19 Greg Grandin, ‘The Instruction of Great Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and State Formation in Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala,’ American Historical Review 110(1) (2005): 56.
21 Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Lima: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, 2003) [hereinafter ‘Peru TRC Report’], vol. 3.
22 Hatun Willakuy: Version Abreviada del Informe Final de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Lima: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, 2004).
24 Mac Darrow and Amparo Tomas, ‘Power, Capture, and Conflict: A Call for Human Rights Accountability in Development Cooperation,’ Human Rights Quarterly 27(2) (2005): 475.
27 See, for example, Cynthia J. Arnson and I. William Zartman, ed., Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). For an overview of theories on why individuals choose to join insurgency movements, see, Nicholas Sambanis, ‘Poverty and the Organization of Political Violence,’ Brookings Trade Forum (2004): 165–211.
28 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler argue that the profit motive explains most armed rebellion, thus provoking the greed versus grievance debate. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War,’ Oxford Economic Papers 56(4) (2004): 563–595. Others argue that ‘spoilers’ and ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ manipulate the perception (real or not) of ‘elite capture’ to provoke disempowered groups to violence. See, Darrow and Tomas, supra n 24.
29 Prevention of Armed Conflict: Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/55/985-S/2001/574 (7 June 2001) [hereinafter ‘Prevention of Armed Conflict’], para. 7.
30 Johanna Mendelson Forman, ‘Achieving Socioeconomic Well-Being in Postconflict Settings,’ Washington Quarterly 25(4) (2002): 126.
31 John Williamson, ‘What Washington Means by Policy Reform,’ in Latin American Readjustment: How Much Has Happened, ed. John Williamson (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1989); Daniel D. Bradlow and Claudio Grossman, ‘Limited Mandates and Intertwined Problems: A New Challenge for the World Bank and the IMF,’ Human Rights Quarterly 17(3) (1995): 411–442; UN Development Programme (UNDP), Evaluation of UNDP Assistance to Conflict-Affected Countries (2006).
33 John P. Blair, Local Economic Development: Analysis and Practice (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995).
34 John Saul, ‘Cry for the Beloved Country: The Post-Apartheid Denouement,’ Monthly Review 52(8) (2001): 1–51.
35 Mahmood Mamdani argues that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission's mandate narrowly focused on individual acts of political violence instead of viewing apartheid as ‘the crime itself.’ Mahmood Mamdani, ‘Reconciliation without Justice,’ Southern African Review of Books 46 (1996): 3–5.
38 Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Anchor Press, 2004).
39 Abraham F. Lowenthal, ‘Latin America at the Century's Turn,’ in The Global Divergence of Democracies, ed. Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 307.
40 Dale McKinley and Ahmed Veriava, Arresting Dissent: State Repression and Post-Apartheid Social Movements (Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2005), 2.
41 Javier Auyero, ‘Glocal Riots,’ International Sociology 16(1) (2001): 33–53.
42 Nicole Hertvik, ‘El Salvador: Effecting Change from Within,’ UN Chronicle 39(3) (2002): 75–76.
43 Michael P. Scharf and Paul R. Williams, ‘The Functions of Justice and Anti-Justice in the Peace-building Process,’ Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 35(2) (2003): 174.
44 Carlos Iván Degregori, ‘"Hasta las últimas consecuencias": Gobierno local y conflict en Ilave, Perú, 2004,’ Revista Europea de Estudios Latinomericanos y del Caribe (2005): 89–99.
45 ‘Defensoría del Pueblo registró en Septiembre 76 conflictos sociales en el país,’ La República, 7 October 2007.
46 Lisa J. Laplante and Suzanne A. Spears, ‘Out of the Conflict Zone: The Case for Community Consent Processes in the Extractive Sector,’ Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 11 (2008): 69–116.
47 Defensoría del Pueblo, Los Conflictos Socioambientales por Actividades Extractivas en el Peru (April 2007), 4. Translation by author.
48 Even if treaties that establish state obligations in regard to economic, social and cultural rights concede that the state must ‘progressively’ fulfill these obligations, this doctrine nevertheless clearly establishes that states must make a steady and good faith effort to work toward the obligations.
49 Elsewhere I discuss Peru's clear concern about international opinion. Lisa J. Laplante, ‘Entwined Paths to Justice: The Inter-American Human Rights System and the Peruvian Truth Commission,’ in Paths to International Justice: Social and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Marie-Bénédicte Dembour and Tobias Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
50 I do not propose that the ends justify the violent means used by the illegally armed groups, nor that those responsible for crimes of terrorism should not be held criminally accountable. Rather, I suggest that even if condemning the violence, it is only wise to begin examining the underlying motivation for terrorist tactics if we hope to prevent their recurrence in the future. See, Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2005).
51 I take a measured approach like that of Margaret Popkin and Naomi Roht-Arriaza, who argue, ‘The truth commission model has become so well known that it runs the danger of being perceived as something of a panacea rather than as one of a panoply of measures needed to undertake the complex process of coming to terms with the past.’ Margaret Popkin and Naomi Roht-Arriaza, ‘Truth as Justice: Investigatory Commissions in Latin America,’ Law and Social Inquiry 20(1) (1995): 80.
52 See, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).
53 John Williamson, ‘Did the Washington Consensus Fail?’ (outline of speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, 6 November 2002).
54 Specifically, in the Cold War challenges to capitalism were viewed in terms of ideology, as opposed to as factual policy discussions on effective approaches to development. See, José Seoane and Emilio Taddei, ‘From Seattle to Porto Alegre: The Anti-Neoliberal Globalization Movement,’ Current Sociology 50(1) (2002): 99–122.
55 For further discussion, see, Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development (Bloomfield, NY: Kumarian Press, 2005); Arjun Sengupta, ‘On the Theory and Practice of the Right to Development,’ Human Rights Quarterly 24(4) (2002): 837–889; Audrey R. Chapman, ‘A "Violations Approach" for Monitoring the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,’ Human Rights Quarterly 18(1) (1996): 23–66; Kenneth Roth, ‘Defending Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Practical Issues Faced by an International Human Rights Organization,’ Human Rights Quarterly 26(4) (2004): 63–73.
56 Robert E. Mazur, ‘Realization or Deprivation of the Right to Development under Globalization? Debt, Structural Adjustment, and Poverty Reduction Programs,’ GeoJournal 60(1) (2004): 61–71.
57 Susan Minushkin, ‘Financial Globalization, Democracy, and Economic Reform in Latin America,’ Latin American Politics and Society 46(2) (2004): 151–165.
58 The UN Millennium Development Goals have set benchmarks for reducing poverty and inequalities by 2015, noting that ‘every step taken towards reducing poverty and achieving broad-based economic growth is a step toward conflict prevention.’ See, official website, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.
59 In 1992, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali spoke on how ‘cooperative work to deal with underlying economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems can place an achieved peace on a durable foundation. Preventive diplomacy is to avoid a crisis; post-conflict peace-building is to prevent a recurrence.’ Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy and Related Matters, UN Doc. A/47/277-S/24111 (17 June 1992), para. 57.
60 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, UN Doc. A/55/305-S/2000/809 (21 August 2000) [hereinafter ‘Peace Operations Report’].
62 For instance, the Security Council affirms that ‘development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing.’ UN Security Council Resolution 1674 (2006).
63 Prevention of Armed Conflict, supra n 29 at para. 162.
64 John J. Hamre and Gordon R. Sullivan, ‘Toward Postconflict Reconstruction,’ Washington Quarterly 25(4) (2002): 85.
65 Prevention of Armed Conflict, supra n 29 at para. 114.
67 Significantly, Annan began to lay a novel legal foundation that makes prevention an international obligation of ‘state duty to protect’ (now referred to as the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine), as grounded in the UN Charter. Ibid., para. 17. While he refers to collective action for civil and political human rights violations, I would argue that the same doctrine someday could apply to violations of socioeconomic human rights that result in grave and fatal harm to a population.
68 A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility: Report of the Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (Geneva: UN, 2004).
69 David Moore, ‘Levelling the Playing Fields and Embedding Illusions: "Post-Conflict" Discourse and Neo-liberal "Development" in War-Torn Africa,’ Review of African Political Economy 27(83) (2000): 17 (emphasis in original).
70 UNDP, New Dimensions of Human Security: Human Development Report (1994), 23.
71 In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All: Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/59/2005 (21 March 2005) [hereinafter ‘In Larger Freedom’], Annex, para. 2.
73 Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 109. See also, Amartya Sen, Freedom Is Development (New York: Anchor Press, 2001).
74 Darrow and Tomas, supra n 24 at 474.
76 Report of the Secretary-General on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, UN Doc. S/2004/616 (23 August 2004).
77 In Larger Freedom, supra n 71 at para. 137.
78 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speech to the UN General Assembly, New York (February 2002).
79 For example, John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Gordon Sullivan, US army general. See, Hamre and Sullivan, supra n 64. Gerhard Thallinger argues that even if the UN Peacebuilding Commission does not explicitly refer to transitional justice in its provisions, the fields have the common purpose of sustainable peace. Gerhard Thallinger, ‘The UN Peacebuilding Commission and Transitional Justice,’ German Law Journal 8(7) (2007): 681–710.
82 Regulation 2001/10 on the Establishment of a Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor, sec. 2(2).
83 Chega! Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (Dili: Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor, 2005), ch. 7(9), p. 2.
89 Jeremy Sarkin and Erin Daly, ‘Too Many Questions, Too Few Answers: Reconciliation in Transitional Societies,’ Columbia Human Rights Law Review 35(3) (2004): 661–728.
90 Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999). For a critical analysis of this perspective, see, Richard A. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Hugo van der Merwe, ‘National and Community Reconciliation: Competing Agendas in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,’ in Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict, ed. Nigel Biggar (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001).
91 Stuart Wilson, ‘The Myth of Restorative Justice: Truth, Reconciliation and the Ethics of Amnesty,’ South African Journal on Human Rights 17(4) (2001): 550.
92 Susan Dwyer, ‘Reconciliation for Realists,’ Ethics and International Affairs 13 (1999): 95.
93 Peru TRC Report, supra n 21 at vol. 9, p. 29.
94 Harvard anthropologist Kimberly Theidon uses the term ‘micro reconciliation’ to describe how local communities in Peru reintegrate former combatants into communities. Kimberly Theidon, ‘Justice in Transition: The Micropolitics of Reconciliation in Postwar Peru,’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 50(3) (2006): 433–457.
95 Robert Orr, ‘Governing When Chaos Rules: Enhancing Governance and Participation,’ Washington Quarterly 25(4) (2002): 145.
96 Stiglitz, supra n 52 at 78.
97 Peru TRC Report, supra n 21 at vol. 9, p. 31.
98 Peace Operations Report, supra n 60 at para. 27.
99 Richard Ashby Wilson, ‘Justice and Retribution in Postconflict Settings,’ Public Culture 15(1) (2003): 187–190.
100 Van Zyl, supra n 11 at 215.
101 Darrow and Tomas, supra n 24 at 490.
104 Hatun Willakuy, supra n 22.
105 For a more expanded version of this discussion, see, Laplante, supra n 16.
108 Development is a comprehensive process that requires ‘active, free and meaningful participation.’ Declaration on the Right to Development, UN Doc. A/RES/41/128 (4 December 1986).
109 Deepa Narayan, ed., Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002), 14.
110 Deepa Narayan, Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000). For a discussion on this text, see, Susan Moller Okin, ‘Poverty, Well-Being, and Gender: What Counts, Who's Heard?’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 31 (2003): 280–316.
111 Muna Ndulo, ‘The Democratization Process and Structural Adjustment in Africa,’ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 10(1) (2003): 315–368.
112 Darrow and Tomas, supra n 24 at 507.
113 Leebaw, supra n 5 at 112. See also, Michael Barnett, ‘Building a Republican Peace: Stabilizing States after War,’ International Security 30(4) (2006): 87–112.
114 Victoria Sanford, Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Rachel Sieder, ‘War, Peace, and Memory Politics in Central America,’ in The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies, ed. Alexandra Barahona De Brito, Carmen Gonzalez Enriquez and Paloma Aguilar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
115 The topics of empowerment and participation have been written on extensively across disciplines, a summary of which goes beyond this article. I present the writings here as integrated components of human rights theory, the field on which I ground my own research. See, for example, Lisa J. Laplante and Miryam Rivera, ‘The Peruvian Truth Commission's Mental Health Reparations: Empowering Survivors of Political Violence to Impact the Public Health Policy,’ Health and Human Rights 9(2) (2006): 136–163; Lisa J. Laplante, ‘The Process of the Peruvian Truth Commission's Historical Memory Project: Empowering Truth Tellers to Confront Truth Deniers,’ Journal of Human Rights 6 (2007): 433–452.
116 Donald L. Hafner and Elizabeth B. L. King, ‘Beyond Traditional Notions of Transitional Justice: How Trials, Truth Commissions, and Other Tools for Accountability Can and Should Work Together,’ Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 30(1) (2007): 94.
117 Darrow and Tomas, supra n 24 at 506.
118 Van Zyl, supra n 11 at 217.
119 Joseph Stiglitz, Towards a New Paradigm for Development: Strategies, Policies, and Processes (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998).
120 UNDP, Governance for Sustainable Human Development: A UNDP Policy Document (January 1997), ch. 1.
121 Ndulo, supra n 111 at 325.
122 Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, ‘Trials and Errors: Principles and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice,’ International Security 28(3) (2003): 5–44. See also, Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
123 Ruti G. Teitel, ‘Theoretical and International Frameworks: Transitional Justice in a New Era,’ Fordham International Law Journal 26(4) (2003): 900–901.
124 Darrow and Tomas, supra n 24 at 476.
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