Abstract
For much of the short history of the field of transitional justice, “doing justice” has largely centered on some kind of truth telling and accountability for acts of physical violence while questions of economic violence—including plunder of natural resources, corruption and other economic crimes, and violations of economic and social rights more generally—have been pushed to the periphery. This state of affairs is, however, beginning to change with important developments in transitional justice policy and practice in recent years. Increasingly, the question is no longer whether questions of economic violence should be taken up by transitional justice mechanisms and institutions as a general policy matter, but how these questions should be addressed where context-specific factors suggest that it would be important and prudent to do so. There is no articulable set of policy prescriptions that can serve as a detailed roadmap for addressing what will inevitably be heavily contested questions concerning how to bring about greater truth and accountability in matters of economic violence in times of transition. At the same time, greater engagement with questions of economic violence does raise some broad policy questions that should be considered as the boundaries of transitional justice continue to expand. In particular, this chapter argues that activists, scholars, and policymakers need to give careful thought to whether engagement with questions of economic violence should be relatively broad or narrow, and the extent to which transitional justice efforts should be coordinated with wider efforts related to peacebuilding and development in the post-conflict context.
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- 1.
The “third wave” refers to a period of global democratization beginning in the mid-1970s that touched more than sixty countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. See generally Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
- 2.
See generally Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011).
- 3.
Christine Bell, “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field,’” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (2009):27.
- 4.
See Roger Duthie, “Transitional Justice, Development, and Economic Violence,” in this volume.
- 5.
See Kieran McEvoy, “Beyond Legalism: Towards a Thicker Understanding of Transitional Justice,” Journal of Law and Society 34 (2007): 412 (observing that “transitional justice has emerged from its historically exceptionalist origins to become something which is normal, institutionalized and mainstreamed”). This is perhaps best exemplified in high-level reports by the UN Secretary General. See, e.g., United Nations Security Council, The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. S/2011/634, October 12, 2011.
- 6.
See Dustin Sharp, “Interrogating the Peripheries; The Preoccupations of Fourth Generation Transitional Justice,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 26 (2013): 149–78.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
See Rosemary Nagy, “Transitional Justice as a Global Project: Critical Reflections,” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2008): 280–86.
- 9.
Zinaida Miller, “Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 3 (2008). I have argued elsewhere that the challenge to the invisibility of the economic is part of a larger trend in transitional justice scholarship and practice of an increasing willingness to question the peripheries of the field. Similar challenges are being made to the role of the “local” in transitional justice policy and practice, and to the notion that justice and the rule of law can be (re)established via a repertoire of apolitical, value-neutral techniques without considering their connection to the distribution of political, economic, social, and cultural power. See Dustin Sharp, “Interrogating the Peripheries.”
- 10.
In addition to the contributions to this volume, see, e.g., Louise Arbour, “Economic and Social Justice for Societies in Transition,” New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 40, no. 1 (2007); The entire volume of International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2008); Pablo de Greiff and Roger Duthie, eds., Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections (New York: Social Science Resource Council, 2009). For a thoughtful but skeptical take on calls to broaden the mandates of transitional justice institutions, see Lars Waldorf, “Anticipating the Past: Transitional Justice and Socio-Economic Wrongs,” Social and Legal Studies 21 (2012): 171–86.
- 11.
Dustin Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions and Beyond,” in this volume.
- 12.
Naomi Roht-Arriaza, “Reparations and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,” in this volume.
- 13.
United Nations, Guidance Note of the Secretary-General: United Nations Approach to Transitional Justice, March 2010, 7.
- 14.
United Nations Secretary General, “The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Post-Conflict Societies,” UN Doc. S/2011/634, October 12, 2011, 7, 15. Emphasis added.
- 15.
See Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions.”
- 16.
See Duthie, “Transitional Justice, Development, and Economic Violence.”
- 17.
See Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions.”
- 18.
See Evelyne Schmid, “War Crimes Related to Violations of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,” Heidelberg Journal of International Law 71, no. 3 (2011): 3, 5, 9–17.
- 19.
Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, art. 1.
- 20.
See Chris Albin-Lackey, “Corruption, Human Rights, and Activism: Useful Connections and their Limits,” in this volume.
- 21.
For example, though pioneering, some of the work of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission with regards to questions of economic violence appeared to lack a certain rigor. See Dustin Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions and Beyond.”
- 22.
See Duthie, “Transitional Justice, Development, and Economic Violence.”
- 23.
Consider in this regard the example of Kenya where it has been argued that economic issues actually have a longer pedigree and are more central to most victimization accounts than civil and political rights, which “were late entrants to the Kenyan debate.” Godfrey Musila, “Options for Transitional Justice in Kenya: Autonomy and the Challenge of External Prescriptions,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (2009): 460.
- 24.
See, e.g., Johanna Herman et al., “Beyond Justice Versus Peace: Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding Strategies,” in Rethinking Peacebuilding; The Quest for Just Peace in the Middle East and the Western Balkans, eds. Karin Aggestam and Annika Björkdahl (New York: Routledge, 2012) (observing the “importance to find commonalities between the transitional justice and peacebuilding processes, particularly since activities in the field often overlap.”)
- 25.
Dustin Sharp, “Beyond the Post-Conflict Checklist; Linking Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice Through the Lens of Critique,” Chicago Journal of International Law 14 (2013): 165–196.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
As Roman Paris has argued, efforts at coordination often give impetus to centripetal forces in policymaking. See Roland Paris, “Understanding the ‘Coordination Problem’ in Postwar Statebuiliding,” in The Dilemmas of Statebuilding; Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations, eds. Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk (New York: Routledge, 2009), 62.
- 28.
See generally Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Justice as Peace? Liberal Peacebuilding and Strategies of Transitional Justice,” Global Society 21, no. 4 (2007): 580–81.
- 29.
See Chandra Sriram, “Liberal Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: What Place for Socioeconomic Concerns?,” in this volume.
- 30.
See generally, Roland Paris, At War’s End.
- 31.
See Topher McDougal, “The Trilemma of Promoting Economic Justice at War’s End,” in this volume.
- 32.
It has been argued that as transitional justice practices have spread around the world, they have done so not necessarily by adapting themselves to each new context, but through a process of “acculturation” whereby a dominant script or practice is replicated again and again as a result of repeated information exchanges and consultations. James Cavallaro and Sebastián Albuja, “The Lost Agenda: Economic Crimes and Truth Commissions in Latin America and Beyond,” in Transitional Justice from Below, Grassroots Activism and the Struggle for Change, ed. Kieran McEvoy and Lorna McGregor (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2008), 125.
- 33.
Oskar Thoms et al., “State-Level Effects of Transitional Justice: What Do We Know?,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4 (2010): 332.
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Sharp, D.N. (2014). Conclusion: From Periphery to Foreground. In: Sharp, D. (eds) Justice and Economic Violence in Transition. Springer Series in Transitional Justice, vol 5. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8172-0_11
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