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Victims of International Crimes: An Interdisciplinary Discourse pp 67–89Cite as

The Individualising and Universalising Discourse of Law: Victims in Truth Commissions and Trials

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Abstract

The increasing prominence of the role of the victim in managing post-conflict societies is the product of first, the attempt by the state to invert the project of the former regime from producing victims to redeeming victims and second, the framing of the effects of violence through the universalising and individualising discourses of human rights and trauma. Both are used to identify and recognise the victim. This process of selection and recognition of the victim is at the core of the truth, justice, and reconciliation narratives which set out the consensus around injustice and reconciliation. Through the recognition of victims, more than the prosecution of perpetrators, the state seeks to bind the individual to the state. In transitional justice the consensus is produced by the process of justice, in the case of trials by separating the guilty from the innocent and in the case of truth commissions by forging an alliance between the beneficiaries of previous injustice and the victims willing to accept moral victory and symbolic reparations.

The author holds the Chair in Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, Australia.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Robben 2005, p. 143.

  2. 2.

    Grandin 2005.

  3. 3.

    Girard 1977, pp. 63–65.

  4. 4.

    Meister 2002, p. 96.

  5. 5.

    Guerrero et al. 2009.

  6. 6.

    Hirschl 2008, p. 94.

  7. 7.

    Comaroff and Comaroff 2008, p. 144.

  8. 8.

    Asad 1997, pp. 304, 305.

  9. 9.

    Comaroff and Comaroff 2008, p. 145.

  10. 10.

    Bell et al. 2007.

  11. 11.

    The Special Court for Sierra Leone (2002), Special Tribunal for Lebanon (2007), Extraordinary Cambers in the Courts of Cambodia (2003), Ad-Hoc Court for East Timor (2006).

  12. 12.

    Meister 2002, p. 95.

  13. 13.

    Humphrey 2005.

  14. 14.

    International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (Article 24.2): “Each victim has the right to know the truth regarding the circumstances of the enforced disappearance, the progress and results of the investigation and the fate of the disappeared person. Each State Party shall take appropriate measures in this regard [victim includes both the disappeared person and any person who has suffered direct harm as a result of the disappearance; author’s note].” (UN 2006, p. 9).

  15. 15.

    Meister 2002, p. 93.

  16. 16.

    Meister 2002, p. 94.

  17. 17.

    Meister 2005, p. 89.

  18. 18.

    Girard 1977.

  19. 19.

    Hastrup 2003, p. 310.

  20. 20.

    Habermas 1998, p. 162.

  21. 21.

    Humphrey and Valverde 2008; Grandin 2007.

  22. 22.

    Fassin and Rechtman 2009, p. 97.

  23. 23.

    Ricoeur 2000.

  24. 24.

    Humphrey 2010.

  25. 25.

    Grandin 2005, p. 47.

  26. 26.

    Grandin 2005, p. 47.

  27. 27.

    Grandin 2005, p. 53.

  28. 28.

    Grandin 2005, p. 47.

  29. 29.

    Grandin 2005, p. 48.

  30. 30.

    Taylor 1994, p. 197.

  31. 31.

    Grandin 2005, p. 49.

  32. 32.

    Grandin 2005, p. 49.

  33. 33.

    Grandin 2005, p. 50.

  34. 34.

    Grandin 2005, p. 50.

  35. 35.

    Humphrey 2012.

  36. 36.

    Tlemçani 2008, p. 4.

  37. 37.

    McDougall 2005, p. 127.

  38. 38.

    McDougall 2005, p. 127.

  39. 39.

    Ellyas and Hamani 1999.

  40. 40.

    Tlemçani 2008, p. 8.

  41. 41.

    Tlemçani 2008, p. 9.

  42. 42.

    García-Godos and Lid 2010, p. 490.

  43. 43.

    Amnesty International 2011.

  44. 44.

    Human Rights Watch 2012.

  45. 45.

    Human Rights Watch 2012.

  46. 46.

    International Crisis Group 2008.

  47. 47.

    García-Godos and Lid 2010, p. 500.

  48. 48.

    García-Godos and Lid 2010, p. 500.

  49. 49.

    BBC 2011.

  50. 50.

    Bittner 2012.

  51. 51.

    Moores 2011.

  52. 52.

    Osiel 1997.

  53. 53.

    Grandin 2005, p. 49.

  54. 54.

    Malamud-Goti 1996, p. xiii.

  55. 55.

    Malamud-Goti 1996, p. 18.

  56. 56.

    Malamud-Goti 1996, p. 19.

  57. 57.

    Grandin 2005, p. 52.

  58. 58.

    Malamud-Goti 1996, p. 187.

  59. 59.

    Malamud-Goti 1996, p. 19.

  60. 60.

    Humphrey and Valverde 2007.

  61. 61.

    O’Donnell 2009, p. 339.

  62. 62.

    O’Donnell 2009, p. 373.

  63. 63.

    Arendt 1964.

  64. 64.

    Mallinder 2009.

  65. 65.

    Humphrey 2011.

  66. 66.

    Humphrey 2011.

  67. 67.

    Hagan and Levi 2005.

  68. 68.

    Bourdieu 1987.

  69. 69.

    Bourdieu 1977.

  70. 70.

    Bourdieu 1987, p. 844.

  71. 71.

    Bourdieu 1987, p. 816.

  72. 72.

    Hagan and Levi 2005, p. 1507.

  73. 73.

    Wilson 2005, p. 908.

  74. 74.

    Wilson 2011, p. viii.

  75. 75.

    Pavlaković 2010, p. 1725.

  76. 76.

    Pavlaković 2010, p. 1717.

  77. 77.

    Pavlaković 2010, p. 1717.

  78. 78.

    Lamont 2010, p. 1697.

  79. 79.

    Bassiouni 2006, p. 203.

  80. 80.

    Bassiouni 2006, p. 206.

  81. 81.

    Bassiouni 2006, p. 206.

  82. 82.

    Humphrey 2011, p. 17.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Michael Humphrey

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  1. Michael Humphrey
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Correspondence to Michael Humphrey .

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  1. Institut fur Soziologie, Philips Universitat, Ketzerbach 11, Marburg, 35032, Germany

    Thorsten Bonacker

  2. , Institut für Kriminalwissenschaften, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Universitätstraße 6, Marburg, 35032, Germany

    Christoph Safferling

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Humphrey, M. (2013). The Individualising and Universalising Discourse of Law: Victims in Truth Commissions and Trials. In: Bonacker, T., Safferling, C. (eds) Victims of International Crimes: An Interdisciplinary Discourse. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-912-2_5

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