Reforms Carried out by State
Institutions through
Transitional Justice – Tools
for Mass Atrocity Prevention
Tibi Galis, PhD
AIPR
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Connecting the concepts of transitional justice
and mass atrocity prevention from a policy
perspective
Coming up with creative projects related to
transitional justice policies that integrate a
mass atrocity prevention goal, among others
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transitional times are, by nature, fertile periods
for the emergence of new ideas about how a
new regime should work and for the
competition between these new ideas and old
ones
transition is a process through which
individuals and societal actors reinvent their
place in society after a negotiated decision to
move away from an old order or after the
gradual disintegration of such an order
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transitional justice is an essential exercise in
symbolic politics that are developed to alter a
political society's understanding of itself
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‘institutionalization’ through post-Communist
transitional justice mechanisms of the idea that
Communism was a system that was experienced by
citizens as a ‘living lie’ in its last phases
essential tension that marks transitional justice’s
approach to dealing with the past and the present:
the tension between transitional justice exposing,
remembering and understanding political violence
and transitional justice as a tool for establishing
stability and legitimizing transitional compromises
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framing of transitional justice also highlights why
there is tension between two commitments taken
publicly by the elites in times of transition – one
the commitment to signal a break with the politics
of the past that led to violence and second the
commitment to engage in structural reforms
seeking to resolve and defuse the social, political
and economic realities that ignited the initial
conflict
My focus: how transitional justice explores the
depths of delegitimizing the previous regime and
conversely legitimizes the new one.
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transitional justice, while operating in an
environment of transitional constraint, is a policy
complex immensely rich in opportunities.
transitional justice's symbolic nature provides
avenues for rule setting, a much needed function
in transitional societies.
the transitional justice narrative of correcting the
abuses of the past and laying the foundations of a
fair society, different from the past, opens
numerous opportunities for dealing with
perceived consolidational threats.
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Regime consolidation – the process of developing a
functioning, well defined political regime that
makes possible a desired social and political plan
Threat infrastructure
Perceived consolidational threats
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ultimate consolidational threat – mass atrocities
personal constraints (personalities, personal histories),
political elite constraints, leadership constraints etc;
prioritization issues e.g. Argentinean judiciary policy and
the military, South African TRC process and
economic/structural crimes
Transitional justice policies –
“corrected”/redefined as they develop
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Argentina – civilian leadership of the military
Hungary – compensation through privatization
Germany – domestic Holocaust trials
Bolivia – indigenous autonomies
Netherlands – slavery monuments
Numerous states – truth commissions morphing into
secretariats of human rights/ ombudsperson institutions
US – apology for Japanese American internment
UN – reports on Rwanda or Sri Lanka failures
Argentina – NGOs and trials – importance of strategies
Argentina – Bank of Buenos Aires
Localized events, institutional policies
Essential ingredient: policy creativity
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Step 1 - Individual step:
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Please identify within your own society one element of
the consolidational threat infrastructure that you perceive
to be important for domestic mass atrocity prevention
(risk can be very low and very early in the process).
Identify a past abuse that you think can be related to that
present threat.
Develop a transitional justice strategy that is consistent
with the role of the institution where you work and that
can be implemented by your institution and its
governmental/non-governmental partners. Have a clear
image of how this transitional justice process will affect
the mass atrocity risk factor.
Please be creative!
Example - Paraguay
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Step 2 – 2 person step
Explain your group partner your strategy and its
aim and listen to your partner explaining her/his
strategy and its aim.
 Jointly pick the transitional justice policy that seems
most promising to both of you. You must pick one of
the two policy proposals before the next step.
 Now you are one group promoting the chosen
policy.
 You can make changes within the proposed policy
before the next step, based on the interactions within
the group.
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Step 3 – 4 person step
Explain to the other group your strategy and its aim and
listen to the other group explaining their proposed policy
and its aim.
 Jointly pick the transitional justice policy that seems most
promising to the two groups. You must pick one of the
two policy proposals before the next step.
 Now you are one group promoting the chosen policy.
 You can make changes within the proposed policy before
the next step, based on the interactions within the group.
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Step 4 – 8 person step
Explain to the other group your strategy and its aim
and listen to the other group explaining their
proposed policy and its aim.
 Jointly pick the transitional justice policy that seems
most promising to the two groups. You must pick
one of the two policy proposals before the next step.
 Now you are one group promoting the chosen
policy.
 You can make changes within the proposed policy
before the next step, based on the interactions within
the group.
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Step 5 – Plenary
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Presentation of the three chosen policies to all your
seminar colleagues.
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“Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention” – Eds: Sheri
Rosenberg, Tibi Galis, Alex Zucker, Cambridge
University Press, 2015.
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[email protected]
Thank you!