Beyond Legalism: Amnesties, Transition and Conflict Transformation

这个项目的目的是在一些重叠的主题下，对特赦和冲突转变之间的关系有一个“更深入”的理解。大赦的形式和内容与当时的政治状况直接相关。因此，军政府可以利用大赦来阻止调查，过渡政权也可以利用大赦来避免政变。在民主国家，大赦可能源于起诉的实际问题；或者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，对大赦的法律理解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。“赦免”、“找回真相”、“追忆”等传统意义上是指从公众记忆中抹去罪行的努力，并主张“和解需要忘记过去的痛苦和痛苦”。然而，最近的大赦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深入理解这一现象的关键因素。大赦与问责传统上，大赦被视为破坏问责制，使犯罪者逍遥法外。然而，我们希望进一步探讨将大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，试图通过颁布法规给予国家工作人员豁免权来表明对法律的尊重，实际上可能象征着对法治的更大承诺。大赦与受害者和肇事者的建构大赦传统上被用来通过激励战斗人员解除武装来巩固和平。对受害者来说，这可能是转变过程中最痛苦的方面；肇事者不受惩罚的确凿证据，遣散这些人的实际需要的特权，并暗示受害者“毫无价值”。因此，大赦历来有助于形成一种单一的受害者/罪犯二分法。然而，最近的大赦，例如乌干达针对儿童兵的大赦，挑战了这种单一的观点。因此，这项研究将寻求更广泛地探索特赦在形成这些简单化的二分法中所起的作用。特赦、宽恕与和解在特赦过程中，受害者通常被要求放弃惩罚的愿望，而选择“放手”过去或“建设更美好的未来”。例如，南非TRC的大赦被批评为为了更广泛的民族和解而向受害者施加压力，要求他们原谅肇事者。实际上，在许多地方，宗教观念已经融入了世俗的过渡过程。因此，大赦成为一个有用的、实际的和象征性的场所，可以进一步探讨宽恕与和解这两个备受争议的概念的含义，以及它们与冲突转变的关系。大赦与法家主义的局限性当代许多关于过渡时期司法的文献以法律话语为主。国际刑事法院、特设法庭和混合法庭等主要机构的建立，都为法律业已确立的诱人品质提供了制度上的推动力。法律的主导地位抑制了对冲突的跨学科理解。它鼓励以国家为中心的方法，而不考虑饱受战争蹂躏的社区的基层发展，它将“西方”规范置于土著传统之上，并将过渡的所有权限制在了解法律复杂性和语言的社会精英手中。关于大赦的现有文献为这种对法律主义在理解过渡中占主导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.