Ways of Knowing after Atrocity: A knowledge exchange on the methods used to formulate, implement and assess transitional justice processes

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The OTJR/swisspeace Knowledge Exchange examines the methods used to formulate, implement and assess transitional justice. Transitional justice provides a broad set of legal and non-legal responses to serious human rights violations committed during periods of conflict or repressive rule. Human rights trials, truth commissions, memorialisation projects and restorative justice processes are implemented with increasing frequency across the globe. However, as different approaches to transitional justice have been advocated and implemented, there have been clashes over the means through which lawyers, civil society actors, policy-makers, scholars and local populations know atrocity and respond to it. There is therefore a need for a knowledge exchange on the ways of knowing atrocity and our responses to it.The divergent methods used to examine serious human rights violations and the contexts in which these violations occurred have challenged the evidentiary bases of criminal convictions and truth commission reports. While cross-national studies have now identified general trends in the practice of transitional justice, these studies may not necessarily produce the kinds of knowledge useful for specific country contexts. At the same time detailed case studies, in carefully emphasising the particularities of a transition, may constrain the learning and adapting of knowledge across countries. It is crucial to bridge these divides through expertise-sharing among legal practitioners, transitional justice scholars, human rights advocacy groups, violence-affected communities and policy-makers. The OTJR/swisspeace Knowledge Exchange aims to bridge the methodological divides within the practice and research of transitional justice. The project will examine the current methods used to determine the occurrence of serious human rights violations and wider societal harms, the methods used to respond to these harms and the means used to assess the impact of these transitional justice interventions. The project will consist of four knowledge exchange activities; 1) an online forum connecting transitional justice scholars with the research users; the legal practitioners, civil society groups and policy-makers implementing transitional justice processes; 2) a seminar series that will allow for a sustained inquiry and exchange between these stakeholders, resulting in the development of a methods-training manual; 3) two practice-oriented workshops run in Rwanda and Kosovo with in-country scholars and research-users, using the training manual to deepen the practice and research of transitional justice in affected countries; 4) a final evaluation meeting which will assess the dissemination and impact of the online forum, the seminar series and the practice-oriented workshops.