Transitional Justice Forum, the group blog that I’ve been trying to crank up with help from Jonathan Edelstein and some other friends and colleagues, has gotten off to a slow but generally satisfactory start.
Yesterday, I put a new post up there about Afghanistan where earlier this week the government adopted a new transitional-justice “Action Plan”. It’s an interesting situation. Several of the parliamentarians elected to the country’s two-house “Loya Jirga” (parliament) back in September are people accused of involvement in earlier rounds of atrocitiy. As a result, many human-rights activists there are worried that the parliament– which will have its inaugural session next Monday– might attempt to immediately pass legislation for a blanket amnesty. I guess that President Hamid Karzai pushed for government approval of his new TJ “Action Plan” in attempt to forestall that.
Personally, I’m not as opposed to the adoption of amnesties– even blanket amnesties– at the end of long, punishing civil wars as most of my colleagues in the human-rights movement are. I believe fairly strongly, based on quite a broad amount of evidence, that if what we are concerned about is improving adherence to the rule of law, going forward, and if there has been a clear and universally recognized transition out of the preceding, highly atrocity-laden era, then the granting of amnesties can play a role in both marking and easing that transition.
But anyway, in the TJF post, I just mainly describe what I understand of the situation in Afghanistan.
If you’re interested in this issue, why don’t you go over to TJF and submit a comment?
Other posts there over the past couple of months include:
- — Jonathan writing about the still tragically strife-torn situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the attempt of President Joseph Kabila to enact a blanket amnesty there… Another really interesting and humanly challenging situation there…
— me, writing about the recent discovery of huge archives of old police files in Guatemala, and what that might mean for truth-seeking efforts there…
— this short post by Brandon Hamber linking to a story about the recent discovery of mass graves in Namibia…
— Christopher Le Mon, writing about the Saddam trial (also here)…
— me, writing about Uganda and the ICC…
— Jonathan, on Liberia and Aceh…
— me, on the Saddam trial (also here)…
— Joanna Quinn, on Uganda…
… and more.
So as you can see, we have quite a lot of interesting and very thought-provoking “cases” being discussed there, and we’re also probing many of the (sometimes contesting) principles that underlie transitional-justice efforts, as well.
I urge you all to head on over to TJF, read a few of the posts that interest you– and if you can, to leave some comments over there. Even if your comments are only questions, or requests for more information, or for clarification, or whatever. That way, I hope we can make the blog be a bit more lively for everyone.
Ya know, here’s something I find really interesting. The big human-rights organizations have become stunningly successful at ginning up international concern for the ongoing atrocities that they choose to highlightduring any particular period of time… Right now “genocide in Darfur” is on the lips of many, many well-meaning people in the west who this time a year ago probably couldn’t even have found Darfur on a map. A few years ago it was “East Timor” (ditto.)
But once the current round of atrocities dies down some, then the human-rights groups shift everyone’s attention to the next place, and sadly few people– humanitarian aid workers, mainly– are left behind to worry about what actually happens in, say, East Timor, once the place is no longer on the front page of the New York Times…
But if the “landmines of the heart” (as Betty Williams so accurately describes the kind of simmering resentments and desire for revenge that may lie unattended for many years in the aftermath of an atrocity) are not attended to effectively, then they can become ignited once again, very easily, even many years later. And that is the job of Transitional Justice. Transitional Justice mechanisms– whether war-crimes courts, truth commissions, general amnesties, social-reintegration efforts, vetting procedures, or whatever– are those mechanisms used in a post-conflict situation with the goal of ensuring that the inter-group conflict in question and all its attendant atrocities do not recur. They seek to defuse the landmines of the heart. As such, they lie at the heart of any attempt to build a lasting peace where previously there was only conflict, fear, resentment, and war.
That’s why I think that understanding Transitional Justice, and trying to identify which TJ mechanisms can work, and which do not– or, which ones work in which of the many different kinds of post-conflict situation around the world– are really important tasks. That’s why I’ve been working so hard (okay, probably not quite hard enough, but still pretty darn’ hard) with my co-authors there to get this new TJ blog off the ground.
If any of you want to come and help us– whether by posting comments there, or by volunteering to write a main post for us there, or by publicizing the TJF blog in your work and with your colleagues, or whatever– then that would be really great.