Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation

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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.