Transitional Justice and Development

 

Puquio, Peru. A child develops a list of rights as part of an educational project that incorporated the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Photo by Jessica Fern Facette.

Armed conflicts and authoritarian regimes in which massive human rights abuses are committed can have an immensely negative socioeconomic impact on countries. As a result, transitional justice is often pursued in a context of socioeconomic underdevelopment, scarce resources, and myriad competing needs. In this context, decision makers face difficult dilemmas about where to allocate available resources.

In 2007, the ICTJ Research Unit launched a new project, funded by the governments of Germany and Switzerland, to address some of those dilemmas by examining the relationship between transitional justice and development, two fields that, academically and in practice, have proceeded largely isolated from one another. The project identified and analyzed specific synergies between justice and development, and articulated how the two types of initiatives ought to be designed and implemented in order to reinforce the shared goals of citizenship, social integration, governance, peacebuilding, and human security.

The results of the project were published in June 2009 in the edited volume, Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections, edited by Pablo de Greiff and Roger Duthie. The book includes the following chapters:

• Articulating the Links Between Transitional Justice and Development: Justice and Social Integration, Pablo de Greiff
• Roads Less Traveled? Conceptual Pathways (and Stumbling Blocks) for Development and Transitional Justice, Marcus Lenzen
• The Political Economy of the Transition from Authoritarianism, Tony Addison
• Toward Systemic Social Transformation: Truth Commissions and Development, Rolando Ames Cobián and Félix Reátegui
• A Complementary Relationship: Reparations and Development, Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Katharine Orlovsky
• Enhancing Justice and Development Through Justice-Sensitive Security Sector Reform, Alexander Mayer-Rieckh and Roger Duthie
• The Role of Judicial Reform in Development and Transitional Justice, Muna B. Ndulo and Roger Duthie
• Natural Connections: Linking Transitional Justice and Development Through a Focus on Natural Resources, Emily E. Harwell and Philippe Le Billon
• Linking Broad Constellations of Ideas: Transitional Justice, Land Tenure Reform, and Development, Chris Huggins

 

The book is the third in the ICTJ's Advancing Transitional Justice Series, and will be useful for both justice and development practitioners as well as academics in a number of fields. Three additional papers are available on the project website:

• (Re)Creating Education in Postconflict Contexts: Transitional Justice, Education, and Human Development, Julia Paulson

• Building Trust and Capacity: Civil Society and Transitional Justice from a Development Perspective, Roger Duthie

• Accountability for Property Crimes and Environmental War Crimes: Prosecution, Litigation, and Development, Mark A Drumbl

 

In addition, a briefing paper highlights some of the most important findings of the project, and research briefs for all of the project papers are available through the links on the left-hand side of this page. The transcript of a conversation with Philip Alston, professor of law at NYU School of Law, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, and Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals, about the project's conclusions, is also available.

(Updated November 2009)