Funding Transitional Justice to Achieve Transformative Impacts

• In Event: Gender, Relational Harm, and Justice: Legacies of Political Violence

Abstract

This paper examines how major donors fund transitional justice projects, with a particular focus on the ways that transformative gender equity and communal healing goals are supported. It also documents the significant methodological challenges in accessing this data, and the implications of the opacity of information on donor funding in this field. The paper examines TJ mechanisms in Colombia and Sierra Leone to determine the extent to which support for mechanisms popular with international donors, such as criminal trials for conflict-related sexual violence, crowds out funding for mechanisms, such as transformative reparations, which confront structural injustice and attend to the gendered legacies that political violence leaves for survivors and communities. The paper draws on a new dataset tracking funding patterns for transitional justice, which analyses the gendered effects of these patterns, and the effects of gender mainstreaming on the interests and motivations of donors.

Authors

• Kirsten Ainley, Australian National University

• Claire Wilmot, London School of Economics

• Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, University of Arkansas, Little Rock