Salomon Lerner, the president of Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (L) gives a copy of the report to Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. (Reuters/Pilar Olivares) Pursuing justice for the human rights violations suffered by displaced persons may seem, at first glance, like a highly abstract – and potentially irrelevant – proposition. Around the world, tens of millions of people are uprooted by conflict and systematic human rights abuses. Any justice that can be done for the violations that force people from their homes, such as bombings, torture and rape, is inevitably inadequate. There is no “turning back the clock” on these crimes. At the same time, whether they are struggling to find shelter, establish new lives, or make their way back home, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) face a host of pressing economic, social and security problems. Should obtaining an inescapably imperfect measure of accountability for displacement register as a serious concern amidst the innumerable challenges facing post-conflict communities?
Increasingly, in countries from Guatemala and Liberia to Iraq and East Timor, transitional justice processes are used to acknowledge and attempt to uphold responsibility for massive human rights violations. Transitional justice mechanisms include criminal trials, truth commissions, apologies, compensation, property restitution, and vetting processes. The abuses transitional justice seeks to redress often give rise to large-scale displacement, which can represent a violation in its own right. However, historically transitional justice mechanisms have often overlooked displacement as a human rights concern, and have excluded refugees and IDPs despite their important stakes in these processes. At the same time, researchers have devoted little attention to the intersection of these fields.
See full Article.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Advancing Accountability: Displacement and Transitional Justice
Salomon Lerner, the president of Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (L) gives a copy of the report to Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. (Reuters/Pilar Olivares) Pursuing justice for the human rights violations suffered by displaced persons may seem, at first glance, like a highly abstract – and potentially irrelevant – proposition. Around the world, tens of millions of people are uprooted by conflict and systematic human rights abuses. Any justice that can be done for the violations that force people from their homes, such as bombings, torture and rape, is inevitably inadequate. There is no “turning back the clock” on these crimes. At the same time, whether they are struggling to find shelter, establish new lives, or make their way back home, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) face a host of pressing economic, social and security problems. Should obtaining an inescapably imperfect measure of accountability for displacement register as a serious concern amidst the innumerable challenges facing post-conflict communities?
Increasingly, in countries from Guatemala and Liberia to Iraq and East Timor, transitional justice processes are used to acknowledge and attempt to uphold responsibility for massive human rights violations. Transitional justice mechanisms include criminal trials, truth commissions, apologies, compensation, property restitution, and vetting processes. The abuses transitional justice seeks to redress often give rise to large-scale displacement, which can represent a violation in its own right. However, historically transitional justice mechanisms have often overlooked displacement as a human rights concern, and have excluded refugees and IDPs despite their important stakes in these processes. At the same time, researchers have devoted little attention to the intersection of these fields.
See full Article.
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