Justice During Civil Conflict

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Justice and rule-of-law measures have often been touted as a solution to prevent the resumptionof violence following conflict; yet little work has been undertaken to understand the prevalenceof these practices while conflict remains ongoing. These measures include trials, truthcommissions, reparations, as well as alternative accountability processes such as amnesties,purges, and exiles. While existing research has focused on the implementation of justiceprocesses once conflict has ended, pilot data by the PIs suggests that these same practices areoften implemented during violence. The current state of the literature provides little theoreticalunderstanding as to when and why during-conflict justice processes are implemented and theirlikely effect on the duration of conflict and durability of peace.This project investigates the implementation of during-conflict justice to understand whichprocesses, if any, a government implements during internal armed conflicts and in whichcontexts such processes are pursued. Through the collection of a new cross-national datasetcovering the implementation of justice measures during all civil wars since the Second WorldWar, this research greatly improves our understanding of the presence of during-conflict justiceand expands the current state of research on both the implementation of justice processes and thedynamics of conflict more broadly. This project provides an evidentiary basis to determine theconditions under which implementation is more likely, to facilitate the development of theseconditions in countries that may benefit from justice measures and to prevent the development ofcircumstances detracting from these goals. Furthermore, the results of this research will be usedto understand the potential misuses of justice measures for goals not related to conflict resolutionand promotion of the rule-of-law, leading to more effective conflict termination strategies andshortening the duration of civil conflict.