AHRC-NSF MOU: Alternative Accountabilities for Past Human Rights Abuses

世界各国已制定了一系列创新战略，以追究过去侵犯人权行为的肇事者的责任。迄今为止，系统的跨国研究集中于三个主要机制：刑事审判、真相委员会和大赦。 该项目旨在制定一套经过实践检验的理论，以了解更全面的过渡时期司法机制的采用、传播和影响。 为了实现这一目标，研究人员将在现有的过渡时期司法数据库中增加“替代问责制”（即，民事审判、清洗和审查、赔偿和习惯司法）。该项目解决了一个重要的学术和政策问题：替代问责制是否成功地取代或补充了其他过渡时期司法机制，以加强人权保护，民主与和平？ 该项目进一步发展了国际刑事调查员的早期研究，他们在研究中发现，审判对积极的民主和人权改善至关重要。 虽然替代性问责在世界各地与审判和赦免结合使用或单独使用，但迄今为止还没有关于其影响的系统研究。 这个项目将填补这一空白。项目？的学术价值包括开发一个新的理论，何时，如何以及为什么这些机制有助于人权，民主与和平，研究人员将产生学术出版物。该项目更广泛的影响包括学术培训，政策制定和未来的研究。赠款将促进博士后研究员和研究生的专业发展，研究小组将提出关于替代问责制的政策建议，并提交给决策者。最后，研究人员的在线数据库将使世界各地的学术和政策研究人员能够访问最新和最全面的数据库，了解从1970年至今使用的一整套过渡时期司法机制。

Countries around the world have developed a wide range of innovative strategies to hold perpetrators accountable for past human rights violations. To date, systematic and cross-national research has focused on three main mechanisms: criminal trials, truth commissions, and amnesties. The project aims to develop an empirically-tested theory of the adoption, diffusion, and impact of a fuller set of transitional justice mechanisms. In pursuit of this aim, the researchers will add to their existing transitional justice database 'alternative accountabilities' (i.e., civil trials, lustration and vetting, reparations, and customary justice). The project addresses an important scholarly and policy question: do alternative accountabilities successfully substitute or complement other transitional justice mechanisms to strengthen human rights protections, democracy, and peace? This project further develops the earlier research of the PIs, in which they have found that trials are critical to positive democracy and human rights improvements. While alternative accountabilities are used around the world in combination with trials and amnesties or alone, no systematic research on their impact exists to date. This project will fill that void. The project?s intellectual merit involves developing a new theory of when, how, and why these mechanisms contribute to human rights, democracy, and peace that the researchers will produce for scholarly publication. The project's broader impact includes academic training, policy-development, and future research. The grant will further the professional development of post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, and the research team will produce policy recommendations regarding alternative accountabilities that the team will present to policy-makers. Finally, the researchers' online database will allow academic and policy-oriented researchers around the world to have access to the most up-to-date and comprehensive database on a full set of transitional justice mechanisms used from 1970 to the present.