International Journal of Transitional Justice - Advance Access

Forensic Science for Cambodian Justice

Klinkner, M. — 2008-06-19

¹ Cambodia is universally associated with its killing fields – a horrific inheritance from the Khmer Rouge era. Whilst mass grave evidence from that era is referred to in history and social science publications on Cambodia, it has not featured in a legal context to date. The establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) creates an opportunity for a review of this evidence 30 years after the events. Those alleged to be accountable for Cambodia's killing fields are finally being brought to justice. The question is whether this will occur with or without forensic science evidence from the mass graves. This article explores the reasons for using forensic science in the Cambodian context and outlines its potential for legal proceedings. Drawing on relevant literature in the forensic and legal areas, the article provides a brief outline of the legal context created by the ECCC and examines various projects that have recorded evidence relating to the mass graves. Employing an analysis of semistructured, in-depth interviews with forensic and legal experts as well as representatives from the ECCC and the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), the article explores the value of forensic science for the ECCC, including its impact on humanitarian issues in Cambodia.

Reparations for Sexual and Reproductive Violence: Prospects for Achieving Gender Justice in Guatemala and Peru

Duggan, C., Bailey, C. P. y P., Guillerot, J. — 2008-06-18

Sexual and reproductive violence (SRV) perpetrated against women during war or under authoritarian regimes is one of the most severe manifestations of gender-based violence. The authors ask how governments in new or reforming democracies hope to repair SRV and how state programs for reparation might be conceptualized and delivered. By examining the cases of Guatemala and Peru, they explore the problematic of repairing damage caused by SRV and comment on prospects for redress to victims in each country.

Social Reconstruction as a Local Process

Arriaza, L., Roht-Arriaza, N. — 2008-06-18

¹When it comes to post-armed conflict interventions aimed at restructuring a shattered society, policy makers have largely treated countries as an undifferentiated whole, ignoring local dynamics that reinforce or transform the power relations that are often most relevant to peoples’ lives. Using the example of Guatemala, the authors argue that local-level, bottom-up mechanisms can reflect a country's diverse makeup and experience of conflict, and provide crucial precursors or extensions for wider-scale national and international projects. Local-level initiatives also can involve more community members, promote agency and perhaps be less prone to large-scale patronage and corruption. In promoting truth-telling initiatives and confronting the past, memorializing the departed and burying the dead, and resolving ongoing or recent community conflicts, the authors have found that local-level programs have distinct advantages. The article considers local ‘houses of memory,’ community-sponsored psycho-social interventions and exhumations; and conflict resolution based on Mayan methods. It concludes that such efforts should be more systematically identified and supported in post-armed conflict settings. In transitional justice, as elsewhere, the authors find, all politics is local.

The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons: Contributions to Transitional Justice

Crenzel, E. — 2008-06-17

¹This article examines the contributions to transitional justice made by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) in Argentina; a Commission established in December 1983 by then constitutional president, Raúl Alfonsín, to investigate the fate of the disappeared. In particular, the article analyzes how CONADEP's inquiry simultaneously served the functions of creating a new public truth about the crimes – which were based on secrecy, the destruction of evidence and concealment by the state – and of collecting essential legal evidence necessary for the prosecution of perpetrators. Finally, it explains the success of the inquiry, which was a result of the combined efforts of Alfonsín's democratic administration and the Argentinian human rights movement.

Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature in the Time of a Truth Commission, Mark Sanders

du Toit, A. — 2008-06-06

The Quiet Revolutionaries: Seeking Justice in Guatemala, Paul Jesilow and Frank M. Afflitto

Azpuru, D. — 2008-06-05

Greg Grandin and Thomas Miller Klubock, ed. 'Truth Commission: State Terror, History, and Memory,' a special issue of Radical History Review 97 (Winter 2007)

Arthur, P. — 2008-06-03

The Time That Was Broken, the Home That Was Razed: Deconstructing Slavenka Drakulic's Storytelling About Yugoslav War Crimes

Zolkos, M. — 2008-04-03

In this article, I analyze the conceptualization of transitional justice underwriting Slavenka Drakulic's book, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, on the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. I adopt a critical and deconstructive strategy of interpretation that reveals Drakulic's idea of ‘justice for the Balkans’ as not only internally incoherent and fractured but also politically problematic. I introduce two concepts as central to Drakulic's storytelling about transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia: (i) the idea of a ‘broken time’ and (ii) the idea of a ‘razed home.’ I conclude that Drakulic's narratives of justice are aimed at repairing broken time and rebuilding the razed home in a way that reveals the author's redemptive, rather than political, thinking about transitional justice.