Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
13
result(s) for
"Transitional justice Africa Case studies."
Sort by:
Transition and justice : negotiating the terms of new beginnings in Africa
\"This book examines a series of cases where peaceful 'new beginnings' have been declared after periods of violence and where transitional justice institutions played a role in defining justice and the new socio-political order\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Transition and justice
\"This book examines a series of cases where peaceful 'new beginnings' have been declared after periods of violence and where transitional justice institutions played a role in defining justice and the new socio-political order\"--
eBook
Survival Migration
International treaties, conventions, and organizations to protect refugees were established in the aftermath of World War II to protect people escaping targeted persecution by their own governments. However, the nature of cross-border displacement has transformed dramatically since then. Such threats as environmental change, food insecurity, and generalized violence force massive numbers of people to flee states that are unable or unwilling to ensure their basic rights, as do conditions in failed and fragile states that make possible human rights deprivations. Because these reasons do not meet the legal understanding of persecution, the victims of these circumstances are not usually recognized as \"refugees,\" preventing current institutions from ensuring their protection. In this book, Alexander Betts develops the concept of \"survival migration\" to highlight the crisis in which these people find themselves.
Examining flight from three of the most fragile states in Africa-Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia-Betts explains variation in institutional responses across the neighboring host states. There is massive inconsistency. Some survival migrants are offered asylum as refugees; others are rounded up, detained, and deported, often in brutal conditions. The inadequacies of the current refugee regime are a disaster for human rights and gravely threaten international security. InSurvival Migration, Betts outlines these failings, illustrates the enormous human suffering that results, and argues strongly for an expansion of protected categories.
eBook
Transformative Justice
iTransitional justice mechanisms employed in post-conflict and post-authoritarian contexts have largely focused upon individual violations of a narrow set of civil and political rights, as well as the provision of legal and quasi-legal remedies, such as truth commissions, amnesties and prosecutions. In contrast, this book highlights the significance of structural violence in producing and reproducing rights violations. The book further argues that, in order to remedy structural violations of human rights, there is a need to utilise a different toolkit from that typically employed in transitional justice contexts. The book sets out and applies a definition of transformative justice as expanding upon, and providing an alternative to, transitional justice. Focusing on a comparative study of social movements, nongovernmental organisations and trade unions working on land and housing rights in South Africa, and their network relationships, the book argues that networks of this kind make an important contribution to processes advancing transformative justice. Providing an opportunity for affected communities to articulate their concerns over socioeconomic rights issues, such networks provide a vital means by which existing structures and practices may be contested.
eBook
Context, Timing and the Dynamics of Transitional Justice: A Historical Perspective
Legal process is invoked by supporters of transitional justice as necessary if not a precondition for societies affected by mass violence to transition into a new period of peace and stability. In this paper, we question the presumption that trials and/or truth commissions should be an early response to initiating a transitional justice process. We conducted a multi-factorial, qualitative analysis of seven case studies in countries impacted by mass violence and repression--Argentina, Cambodia, Guatemala, Timor-Leste, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. What emerges is a fuller appreciation of the dynamic system in which transitional justice interventions occur. Each system component may influence the outcome of these interventions. We offer principles that can guide institutional development, scholarship, and policy prescriptions in the area of transitional justice.
Journal Article
Focal Points and Turning Points in Negotiation: A Comparative Analysis
In this article, we examine the roles of focal points and turning points in negotiation. Both concern impasses in negotiation, and negotiators can exploit them to move past impasses. Each term uses the word \"point\" differently, however. A focal point refers to a single salient coordinating concept shared by the parties. A turning point is a departure that takes place during the course of a negotiation, when the course seems to change. Precipitants precede turning points and consequences follow them. In this article, we focus on the relationship of these two negotiation concepts. We raise the following questions: Does the development of focal points precipitate departures, and, if so, how? Do departures lead to the development of focal points, and, if so, how? Are there circumstances in which focal points do not precipitate turning points and vice versa? Do negotiations that feature focal points create more or less durable agreements? Do negotiations that include turning points create more or less durable agreements? To help answer these questions, we have analyzed four cases. In the German Foundation Agreement negotiation, the development of focal points precipitated turning points. In the South African Interim Constitution negotiations, turning point departures precipitated the development of focal points. And in the negotiations to end the Burundi civil war and to reach the Noumea Accord between France and New Caledonia, parties shared focal points that did not precipitate turning points. These case analyses provide insights into the role of focal points in producing effective and durable agreements. They also suggest opportunities for further research on the interaction between these concepts.
Journal Article
Turning in the Widening Gyre: History, Corporate Accountability, and Transitional Justice in the Postcolony
This Article argues that transitional justice, by increasing efforts to include corporate accountability within its various mechanisms, may confront the global structures of rule that systematically produce conditions of violence within formerly colonized nation-states. Building on work by Giorgio Agamben and Homi Bhabha, I demonstrate that the very notion of a \"'transition \" around which transitional justice is articulated derives from a nineteenth-century understanding of history that reflects the ideology of development which supported the colonial system. Moments of violent historical discontinuity, legally conceptualized as \"states of exception, \" provide the paradigmatic bases for models of transitional justice. But, in the history of the postcolony, this state of exception functioned as the generalized rule for governance. Accordingly, following scholars Achille Mbembe, Laurel Fletcher, and Harvey M. Weinstein, transitional justice must adopt an ecological approach that embraces the lived historical experience of the postcolony, including its unique structures of governance. The history of Sierra Leone provides a case study of how the legay of colonial governmentality persists in the present global order, creating the kinds of atrocities that transitional justice aims to remediate. Specifically, the colonial modiel of indirect rule has become reconfigured such that the postcolonial government secures legitimacy by meditating between local populations and non-state actors, including transnational corporations. To restructure these relationships effectively, transitional justice must, therefore, engage with the ongoing work toward corporate accountability. By advocatingfor legally binding mechanisms addressing corporate impunity and incorporating the U.N. Guiding Principles into the work of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, transitional justice can further advance its core objectives and the movement toward corporate accountability more generally.
Journal Article
New Dilemmas in Transitional Justice: Lessons from the Mixed Courts in Sierra Leone and Cambodia
This article argues that the mixed tribunals of Sierra Leone and Cambodia provide important lessons about the problems and dilemmas in achieving the legitimacy that is necessary for transitional justice mechanisms to have a positive local impact. High hopes have been held for the mixed model, but experiences shows that this model is no easy fix to the legitimacy problems faced by the international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. By locating a tribunal in the post-conflict setting, new dilemmas of legitimacy may arise. This article suggests that transitional justice mechanisms should strike a balance between backward-looking and forward-looking justice, and between international and national participation in the tribunals, but this is not done by simply locating a tribunal in the affected country.
Journal Article
‘Who Seeks, Finds’: How Artisanal Miners and Traders Benefit from Gold in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
In a context of intensifying struggles to secure access to mineral resources, governments systematically endorse large-scale mining. In many regions, though, artisanal mining is a very important livelihood, from which different groups of people derive benefits. Understanding the micro-functioning of this sector, and thus understanding how people gain access to mineral resources, is a primary task for development actors. This article seeks to describe and analyse empirically how people benefit from artisanal mining and trade and which institutions and power relations shape their ability to benefit. Using the gold mines in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as a case study, the article demonstrates that artisanal miners and traders not only face constraints but also seize opportunities through forum shopping, personal relations and ‘informal’ norms. It also shows how people use ‘access mechanisms’ to secure access to the gold and to mitigate the uncertainties created by the particular institutional context.
Dans un contexte où les luttes pour sécuriser l’accès aux ressources minérales s’intensifient, les gouvernements soutiennent systématiquement l’exploitation minière à grande échelle. Pourtant, dans de nombreuses régions, l’exploitation minière artisanale est un moyen de subsistance très important, bénéficiant différents groupes. Comprendre le micro-fonctionnement de ce secteur et comment leurs acteurs accèdent aux ressources minérales est essentiel pour le développement. Cet article a pour but de décrire et d’analyser empiriquement comment les populations tirent profit de l’exploitation et du commerce miniers, et quelles institutions et relations de pouvoir façonnent leur capacité à en bénéficier. En utilisant les mines d’or de l’est de la République démocratique du Congo comme étude de cas, nous démontrons que les petits exploitants miniers font certes face à des contraintes, mais peuvent également saisir de nouvelles opportunités par l’intermédiaire de relations personnelles, d’exploitation de normes ‘informelles’, et des processus de surenchère. Nous examinons également comment les populations concernées utilisent certains ‘mécanismes d’accès’ pour sécuriser l’accès à l’or et lutter contre les incertitudes propres au contexte institutionnel.
Journal Article
Truth Commissions and Criminal Courts
This detailed evaluation of the relationship between trials and truth commissions challenges their assumed compatibility through an analysis of their operational features at national, inter-state and international levels. Alison Bisset conducts case-study analyses of national practice in South Africa, East Timor and Sierra Leone, evaluates the problems posed by the International Criminal Court and considers the challenges presented by the possibility of bystander state prosecutions. At each level, she highlights potential operational conflicts and formulates targeted proposals to enable effective coexistence.
eBook