Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation

该项目旨在加深对特赦与冲突转变之间在若干重叠主题下的关系的“深入”理解。大赦和公共权力特赦的形式和内容与当时的政治状况直接相关。因此，军事团体可以利用赦免来阻止调查或过渡政权以避免政变。在民主国家，赦免可能是因为起诉的实际问题；也可能是出于削弱政治对手、转移批评或鼓励叛乱分子解除武装的愿望。因此，必须通过对政治权力和合法性建设的更全面的理论理解来加强对特赦的法律理解。大赦、真相恢复和公众纪念赦免传统上是指努力将罪行从公众记忆中抹去，并通过声称和解需要忘记过去的痛苦和苦难来为其辩护。然而，最近的赦免与真相恢复机制相结合，以促进纪念，鼓励肇事者承担责任，并创造公正的历史记录。因此，真相、记忆和健忘症之间的交集是更深入地理解这一现象的关键因素。大赦和问责大赦传统上被视为破坏问责制，使犯罪者逍遥法外。然而，我们希望进一步探讨将特赦作为实现问责的一种手段的概念，提出一个论点，即在以前以无法无天为特征的独裁政权中，试图通过制定法规给予国家特工豁免权来表明对法律的尊重，实际上可能象征着对法治的假定更大的承诺。大赦和建立受害者和永久特赦传统上被用来通过鼓励战斗人员解除武装来巩固和平。它们可能是受害者过渡过程中最痛苦的方面；这是犯罪者逍遥法外的积极证据，是让这些人复员的实际需要的特权，并暗示受害者“一文不值”。因此，赦免在历史上有助于形成一种单一层面的受害者/犯罪者二分法。然而，最近的特赦，如乌干达特赦针对儿童兵，挑战了这种一成不变的观点。因此，这项研究将寻求更广泛地探讨赦免在发展这些简单化的二分法中所起的作用。大赦、宽恕和和解在大赦过程中，受害者往往被敦促放弃惩罚的愿望，转而“放弃”过去或“建设更美好的未来”。例如，南非真相与和解委员会的特赦受到了批评，因为它向受害者施加了压力，要求他们为了更广泛的民族和解而宽恕肇事者。实际上，在许多地方，宗教思想已被纳入世俗的过渡进程。因此，赦免成为进一步探讨备受争议的原谅与和解概念的含义及其与冲突转变的关系的一个有用的、实际的和象征性的场所。大赦和法律主义的局限性当代许多关于过渡时期司法的文学都被法律话语所主导。国际刑事法院以及特设法庭和混合法庭等主要机构的设立，都为法律已确立的诱人品质提供了体制动力。法律的主导地位阻碍了对冲突的跨学科理解。它鼓励以国家为中心的做法，而不考虑战乱社区的基层发展，它将“西方”规范置于土著传统之上，并将过渡的所有权限制为了解法律复杂性和语言的社会精英。现有的关于赦免的文献为这种对法律主义在理解过渡中的支配地位的更广泛的批评提供了一个很好的案例研究。

This project aims to develop a 'thicker' understanding of the relationship between amnesty and conflict transformation under a number of overlapping themes.1. Amnesty and Public PowerThe shape and content of amnesties are directly related to prevailing political conditions. Thus amnesties can be used by military juntas to prevent investigations or transitional regimes to avert coups. In democracies, amnesties may result from the practical problems of prosecutions; or from desires to undermine political opponents, deflect criticism, or encourage insurgents to disarm. Legal understandings of amnesty must therefore be enhanced by more rounded theoretical understandings of political power and the construction of legitimacy.2. Amnesty, Truth Recovery and Public MemoryAmnesties have traditionally denoted efforts to erase crimes from the public memory, and were justified by asserting that reconciliation requires forgetting past pain and suffering. However, recent amnesties have been combined with truth-recovery mechanisms to promote memorialisation, encourage perpetrators' responsibilisation, and create an impartial historical record. Thus the intersection between truth, memory and amnesia is a crucial element in a thicker understanding of the phenomenon.3. Amnesty and AccountabilityAmnesty is traditionally seen as undermining accountability and creating impunity for perpetrators. However, we wish to explore further the notion of amnesty as a means for achieving accountability by developing an argument that in dictatorial regimes previously characterised by lawlessness, attempts to demonstrate respect for the law by enacting statutes to grant state agents immunity may actually symbolise a putative greater commitment to the rule of law.4. Amnesty and the Construction of Victim and PerpetratorAmnesties have traditionally been used to consolidate peace by providing incentives for combatants to disarm. They can be the most painful aspect of transition for victims; proof positive of perpetrators' impunity, the privileging of the pragmatic need to demobilise such individuals, and suggestive of the victims' 'worthlessness'. Thus, amnesties have historically helped to develop a unidimensional victim/offender dichotomy. However, recent amnesties, such as the Ugandan amnesty's targeting of child soldiers, challenge such monochromatic views. This research would therefore seek to explore more expansively the role that amnesties play in developing these simplistic dichotomies5. Amnesty, Forgiveness and ReconciliationIn amnesty processes, victims are often urged to forgo the desire to punish in favour of 'letting go' of the past or 'building a better future'. For example, the South African TRC's amnesty has been criticised for the pressure applied to victims to forgive perpetrators in the interest of broader national reconciliation. In effect, in many locations, religious ideas have been incorporated into secular processes of transition. Thus amnesties become a useful practical and symbolic site to explore further what is meant by the highly contested notions of forgiveness and reconciliation and their relationship to conflict transformation6. Amnesty and the Limitations of LegalismMuch contemporary literature on transitional justice is dominated by legal discourses. The creation of major institutions such as the ICC and the ad hoc and hybrid tribunals have all given institutional impetus to law's well-established seductive qualities. Law's dominance inhibits interdisciplinary understandings of conflict. It encourages a state-centred approach lacking regard for ground-level developments in wartorn communities, it privileges 'western' norms over indigenous traditions, and limits the ownership of transition to societal elites who understand legal complexities and language. Existing literature on amnesties provides an excellentcase study for this broader critique of the domination of legalism in the understanding of transition.