The debate is a format that is currently retired, and no longer accessible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
“Transitional justice” is anything but static: like social and political transitions themselves, transitional justice refers to a set of processes that are constantly evolving, continuously shaped by new realities of conflict and its aftermath and shifting circumstances of recovery after revolution. While truth, justice, and dignity of victims should always be the impetus for transitional mechanisms, those working to support societies’ reckoning with the past must stay informed by new strategies, ideas, and scholarship that can help catalyze social transformation.
It is these new challenges and cutting-edge issues in our field that ICTJ hopes to illuminate through a new series of online debates.
Facilitated by the global reach of ICTJ’s online presence, the debates will bring together diverse voices—those of victims, activists, practitioners, journalists and scholars—to examine emerging issues in the struggle for accountability and reform on which there is no consensus. Our goal is to create vibrant global discussions and host open and spontaneous exchanges, all towards the goal of deepening the understanding of transitional justice and considering new relationships and possibilities among the legal, social, cultural, and political components of reckoning with the past.
The first question in the online debate series will consider the role of the media in transitional justice: Should the media be a neutral reporter on transitional justice efforts, or must it take a proactive role to support these measures?
On Monday, May 5, to mark World Press Freedom Day, we unveiled opening arguments from two international award-winning journalists: Carlos Dada, founder and director of the news website El Faro, and Dejan Anastasijević, correspondent for the Serbian news agency Tanjug. The debate will be moderated by ICTJ Communications Director Refik Hodzic. Prominent guests will present their positions on the issue at various stages.
At each stage of the debate—opening statements, rebuttals, and closing statements—we invite you to comment, respond to our guests’ opinions, and share your views.
ICTJ invites you to follow the debate on Twitter with the hashtags #ICTJdebate and #TJmedia.
Photo: Journalists in Guatemala City listen to testimony of Guatemala's former dictator, Efrain Rios Montt, who was later convicted of genocide). SANDRA SEBASTIAN/PLAZA PUBLICA
