Innovative Uses of Transitional Justice in Ongoing Conflict and for Corporate Complicity

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The proposed project responds to a request from practitioners and policy makers to use the AHRC-funded Transitional Justice Research Collaborative (TJRC) to design more effective transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms to address new challenges in peace and human rights. TJ has become the key set of policies and practices to strengthen democracy, peace, and human rights after atrocity. It has tended to target abuses by state actors or state-like actors (e.g., paramilitaries or rebel armies) in the aftermath of dictatorships and armed conflicts. Very recently policy makers and practitioners have begun adapting it to address abuses in two new contexts: ongoing armed conflict and where nonstate - business - actors participated in past violence. The only systematic research and analysis that exists on these new uses of TJ is the TJRC. The proposed follow-on project aims to enhance the value of the previously funded project by engaging in an international academic-practitioner collaboration to design, implement, and disseminate effective, empirically tested, context-specific, TJ policies to advance peace in the context of ongoing conflict and address victims' needs for justice and remedy for corporate human rights abuses. The TJRC is the only database of its kind that tracks the adoption of seven TJ mechanisms (criminal trials, amnesties, truth commissions, civil trials, vetting, reparations, and customary justice) in 116 countries that have transitioned from authoritarian rule to democracy or armed conflict to peace between 1970 and 2012. The comprehensive database allowed the team to generate 'path-breaking results' (communication from Prof Guillermo Trejo, University of Notre Dame, 14 June 2016) regarding the impact of TJ on strengthening democracy, human rights, and peace. Cross-national databases, such as the TJRC, generate global patterns and impact, but often have limited utility for practitioners' day-to-day work in the fields of conflict resolution and human rights. The TJRC's cross-national comparative and nuanced case study data and analysis overcomes this weakness of other studies. It has proved useful for adaptation to effective policy and practice in unique country contexts. The proposed partnership with ANDHES, an organization that has adapted and implemented TJRC models in Argentina, provides the know-how to extend the collaboration to five additional countries and beyond. These models are in demand by practitioners working in countries emerging from armed conflict and attempting to promote human rights' victims' rights for redress and remedy. The TJRC thus fills a void in knowledge about existing and effective models. The partnership with ANDHES adds practical and logistical know-how in adapting those models. Rather than impose these models, however, the partnership responds to a demand for engagement from domestic and international stakeholders to adapt and implement them to suit particular contexts. The collaboration aims to design and implement appropriate, context-specific, TJ mechanisms based on TJRC findings and ANDHES's experience to Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru. It will develop a draft truth commission, a strategic litigation manual, TJ mechanisms for peace in ongoing conflict, and models to support implementation (amicus curiae and policy briefs and news articles).Building on existing collaborations, the partnership aims to develop a collaboration with participating organizations in five countries and key international organizations to design, adapt, implement, and disseminate effective 'best practices' for TJ in ongoing conflict and for corporate human rights abuses. It plans to develop a wider international network of users, including potential new users (specifically in South Africa), to expand the impact of the project globally. Finally it will work with those potential partners to develop funding proposals for future impact activities.