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The Evolution of Transitional Justice – Insights for/from Conflict Resolution
Thursday, February 12th
10:30am - 12:00pm
Metropolitan Building 5183
Transitional Justice has emerged dramatically in the last 30 years as a field of inter-disciplinary practice. It is however understood mainly in terms of the mechanisms (truth commissions, amnesties, human rights trials, etc.) that societies use to come to terms with legacies of mass human rights violations. The meaning and boundaries of TJ have evolved in relation to the shifting contexts and political agendas that shape transitions to democracy. Can Conflict Resolution as a more theoretically grounded field provide insights for developing a more general or bounded approach to engaging with TJ challenges?
Hugo van der Merwe received his PhD from SCAR in 1999. For the last 17 years Hugo has been based at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa. He has managed a range of research, advocacy and intervention projects relating to transitional justice and peacebuilding processes in South Africa other countries on the continent. Hugo is the founding editor of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (OUP), and co-editor of Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice (1993), Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice: Challenges for Empirical Research, (2009) and Truth and Reconciliation: Did the TRC Deliver? (2010).