The Harm of Criminal Accountability: The potential of zemiology to disrupt understandings of transitional justice responses to atrocity

• In Event: New Knowledge and Perspectives in International and Transitional Justice (ECACTJ Working Group)

Abstract

This paper explores the potential that insights from the zemiology could provide to help transitional justice researchers and practitioners rethink responses to atrocity, moving away from, or at least diluting, the common starting point of criminalisation and judicial accountability, instead reorientating the focus, within the fields of international criminal law and transitional justice, on the principle of social harm. This conceptually leaning paper draws upon contextual examples from Kenya, Rwanda and Brazil. In doing so it is also in conversation with the abolition movement for international criminal law although takes a social harm approach to the diverse ‘field’ of transitional justice. The paper argues that if we apply a zemiology lens to transitional justice, specifically originating and maintaining focus on social harms rather than crime, can potentially help illuminate different and more nuanced ways of articulating and responding to atrocity which may also help navigate the many grey zones and shades of a crime orientated transitional justice.

Author

• Benjamin Thorne, University of Reading