The intuitive appeal of learning from the past to alter the present

Examining the past to better understand our present and future and even to change the way we act in the present and future, is something that has instinctive appeal. The argument is often made that by better understanding the context within which past harm took place, and the societal factors that contributed to it, we will better be able to recognize these circumstances when they re-emerge and be able to prevent harm from happening again in the future..

neglecting social and economic rights violations in transitional justice long term effects on accountability

This article builds on theories about the expressive function of law and uses Structural Topic Modelling to examine how the prioritisation of civil and political rights (CPR) issues by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has affected the agendas of Cambodian human rights NGOs with an international profile. It asks whether these NGOs' focus on CPR issues can be traced back to the near-exclusive focus on CPR issues by the court, and whether this has implications for the creation of a "thick" kind of human rights accountability. It argues that, considering the nature of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal policy, it would have been within the mandate and capacity of the court to pay more attention to actions that also constituted violations of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR). The fact that the court did not do this and instead almost completely obscured ESCR rhetorically has triggered a similar blind spot for ESCR issues on the part of human rights NGOs, which could have otherwise played an important role in creating a culture of accountability around this category of human rights. Does this mean that violators of ESCR are more likely to escape prosecution going forward

Chapter 7 Overlooking women’s lived realities

Arab Spring, Transitional Justice, North Africa, Anticorruption, Colonial Legacy, international involvement, Reparations, victim participation, youth leadership, activism, racial taboo

Contemporary transformations seen in the use of human rights

Human rights are increasingly described as in crisis. The rising populist tide that puts nation, religion, and race first poses new kinds of threats to human rights. But are human rights, underpinning the universal order of justice, really on the verge of disappearing

February 4, 1938

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

Karen Kampwirth: Latin America’s New Left and the Politics of Gender: Lessons from Nicaragua

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Using restorative justice to rethink the temporality of transition in Chile

Assumptions of linear progress and a clean break with the past have long characterised transitional justice interventions. This notion of temporality has increasingly been problematised in transitional justice scholarship and practice. Scholars have argued that a more complex understanding of temporalities is needed that better accommodates the temporal messiness and complexity of transitions, including their ongoingness, multilayeredness and multidirectionality. Existing critiques, however, have not yet resulted in a new conceptual framework for thinking about transitional temporalities. This article builds on insights from the field of restorative justice to develop such a framework. This framework foregrounds longer timelines, multilayered temporalities and temporal ecologies to better reflect reality on the ground and victims’ lived experiences. We argue that restorative justice is a useful starting point to develop such a temporal framework because of its actor-oriented, flexible and interactive nature and proximity to the field of transitional justice. Throughout this article we use the case of Chile to illustrate some of the complex temporal dynamics of transition and to illustrate what a more context-sensitive temporal lens could mean for such cases of un/finished transition