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

世界各国制定了广泛的创新战略，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在三个主要机制上：刑事审判、真相委员会和大赦。该项目旨在发展一套经过经验检验的理论，以探讨更全面的过渡时期司法机制的采用、推广和影响。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将在他们现有的过渡时期司法数据库中增加“替代责任”（即民事审判、调查和审查、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：替代性问责制能否成功替代或补充其他过渡时期司法机制，从而加强人权保护、民主与和平？该项目进一步发展了早期的pi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。虽然替代问责制在世界各地与审判和大赦相结合或单独使用，但迄今为止还没有对其影响进行系统研究。这个项目将填补这一空白。这个项目吗?研究人员将为学术出版物提出一种新的理论，阐述这些机制何时、如何以及为何对人权、民主与和平做出贡献。该项目更广泛的影响包括学术培训、政策制定和未来研究。该资助将促进博士后和研究生的专业发展，研究团队将提出有关替代问责制的政策建议，并向政策制定者提交。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关于1970年至今使用的一整套过渡时期司法机制的最新和全面的数据库。

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.