Locating Transformative and Transitional Justice in the Americas

• In Event: Pluralistic Justice: Citizen/State Relationships After Human Rights Abuses

Abstract

The promise of, and early enthusiasm with, transitional justice was predicated on the shared assumption that these mechanisms would foster national reconciliation, provide an official record of past abuses, establish accountability for perpetrators, and set the path for a democratic future. In the early years, there was little concern about whether these objectives were in tension with one another, or whether they would encounter societal resistance. As the field evolved over the years, the commitment towards the values of accountability and the fight against impunity remained unassailable. But the challenges to the traditional formula of democratization and reconciliation through transitional justice mechanisms, muted initially, grew louder, and they eventually occupied the forefront of academic discussions. At the center of the debate lies the critical question whether these justice mechanisms effectively spoke to (or even whether in some cases negatively impacted) the human security of the citizens they were supposed to serve.
This paper shows that in the pursuit of its goal of delivering accountability while achieving reconciliation and setting the foundation for democratic rule, transitional justice painted itself into a corner: as its failures to deliver on its promises became apparent, more was demanded of it to address them. This created an inverted paradox of success: the less effective transitional justice was shown to be, the more we expected from it (Balasco 2013). This paper chronicles the critical insights that emerged within the transitional justice field to assess the challenges its mechanisms confront. I discuss the contributions made in the examination of the obstacles transitional justice face in establishing and maintaining legitimacy, providing pathways towards meaningful long-term reform, and executing a vision of justice that represents the population served. Some of these contributions converge in an alternative paradigm to transitional justice, which came to be known as transformative justice, a direct response to the inverted paradox of success I identify. The transformative justice approach has as its point of departure the growing consensus that transitional justice mechanisms fall short, are ill-equipped, or are simply not designed to carry out the structural transformations that are needed to empower citizens and allow them to carry out the necessary socioeconomic reforms to dismantle the structures that perpetuate violence and exclusion. The paper explores how transformative justice actors, in a variety of political contexts, engage in the tasks that transitional justice promised but was unable to deliver. As I show, there are instances when transitional justice and transformative justice activists find areas of convergence. In others, their agendas diverge.
In this regard, this paper offers two central contributions to the transitional justice and transformative justice literatures. First, the paper extends beyond the normative claims articulated within the transformative justice agenda by providing a central analysis of how transformative justice actors and initiatives play out on the ground. Second, it offers a conceptual matrix to unpack the variegated work performed by transformative justice actors. More specifically, this paper discusses the extent to which these actors frame contemporary human insecurities – i.e., the pervasive threats and deprivation that impede on the rights and opportunities people need to ensure livelihoods of dignity and wellbeing – as claims to justice. The agenda setting and advocacy work of these human rights actors serve as the centerpiece of analysis. This paper, then, contributes towards understanding the strategies and discourse these actors use on the ground to engage with transitional justice and democratic institutions in their efforts to promote the human security agenda as a matter of justice. In so doing, I offer a deeper understanding as to why and how human rights actors anchor, and relate, their current agendas of improving livelihood conditions to the country’s legacy of state violence or authoritarianism. The paper’s empirical illustrations from the Americas discuss a series of cases to show how scholars can study the power and politics of transformative justice in action by looking at the variegated ways citizens advocate for it.

Author

• Lauren Marie Balasco, Stockton University