This paper analyzes how Transitional Justice mechanisms might be deployed to redress injustices resulting from the perpetration of ecocide. It develops the notion of ecocide as social deathas a class of environmental harms severe enough to trigger a Transitional Justice response. If a state authorizes ecological destruction in a way that demonstrates wanton disregard for the cultures intimately connected to those ecosystems, then it has violated core liberal principles of respect for pluralism. Transitional (...) class='Hi'>Justice can be effectively utilized in overcoming these harms to transform societies from ones that tolerate grave forms of environmental destruction to eco-friendly states that further environmentalist aims. This paper explores how the four kinds of transitional justice mechanisms can aid in abating and mitigating environmental problems: (1) punitive justice mechanisms (criminal trials, lustration, and sanctions); (2) reparative justice mechanisms(reparations, rehabilitation, memorialization, apologies, and guarantees of non-repetition); (3) truth-oriented mechanisms(truth commissions, reports, and education programs); and (4) institutional reform mechanisms(changing laws and amending constitutions). (shrink)

Movements for environmental justice ought to engage the powerful mechanisms of change deployed in a Transitional Justice context. There is reason for restraint, however, in calling upon radically disruptive procedures to immediately amend the basic structure of society. I propose a modest expansion of the purview of Transitional Justice to recognize a class of environmental harms severe enough to trigger transitional measures. This class of harms is ecocide as social death, which I define (...) as deliberate, state-sponsored environmental destruction resulting in the annihilation of ways of life intimately connected to the natural world. The article then considers potential criticisms of this framework: its foundation in liberal political theory, its anthropocentrism, and its exclusion of global environmental harms. Despite being anthropocentric, the model offers a means of politically and legally representing the value of the natural world beyond its role as a stock of resources for human consumption. I defend an expressly liberal approach to Transitional Justice that emphasizes the core of the liberal social contract—respect for diversity. (shrink)

The field of transitional justice—concerned as it is with the mechanisms of recovery from societal conflict and mass violence—has long found its de facto home in legal theory. While this is in many respects a natural pairing, I argue that just as transitional justice has expanded in scope from the regime-change paradigm to general situations of human rights violations, so too should our conception of it expand from the purely legalistic to the more explicitly ethical. (...) This paper makes the case that while transitional justice remains undertheorized along ethical dimensions, increased attention to both the ethical underpinnings of justice interventions and the ability of ethical work to center the individual experience might go a great distance towards addressing what Pablo de Greiff has identified as three of the chief challenges facing transitional justice today: insufficient attention to context, formulism, and technocratic tendencies. (shrink)

In the aftermath of prolonged civil conflict, social repair is essential. Countries like Uganda, various parts of which have been at war since 1962, are in need of healing and renewal. This paper explores the use of customary mechanisms, instead of trials and truth commissions, to bring about societal acknowledgement of what has happened, and it offers ideas as to how these traditional practices might augment the rebuilding process in Uganda.

Among the most prominent and significant political and legal developments since the end of the Cold War is the proliferation of mechanisms for addressing the complex challenges of transition from authoritarian rule to human rights-based democratic constitutionalism, particularly with regards to the demands for accountability in relation to conflicts and abuses of the past. Whether one thinks of the Middle East, South Africa, the Balkans, Latin America, or Cambodia, an extraordinary amount of knowledge has been gained and processes instituted (...) through transitional justice. No longer a byproduct or afterthought, transitional justice is unquestionably the driver of political change. In Globalizing Transitional Justice, Ruti G. Teitel provides a collection of her own essays that embody her evolving reflections on the practice and discourse of transitional justice since her book Transitional Justice published back in 2000. In this new book, Teitel focuses on the ways in which transitional justice concepts have found legal expression, especially through human rights law and jurisprudence, and international criminal law. These essays shed light on some of the difficult choices encountered in the design of transitional justice: criminal trials vs. amnesties, or truth commissions; domestic or international processes; peace and reconciliation vs. accountability and punishment. Transitional justice is considered not only in relation to political events and legal developments, but also in relation to the broader social and cultural tendencies of our times. (shrink)

This article presents findings from a qualitative case study of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in rural Sierra Leone. It adds to the sparse literature directly evaluating local experiences of transitional justice mechanisms. It investigates the conceptual foundations of retributive and restorative approaches to postwar justice, and describes the emerging alternative argument demanding attention be paid to economic, cultural, and social rights in such transitional situations. The article describes how justice is defined in (...) Makeni, a town in Northern Sierra Leone, and shows that the TRC’s restorative approach was unable to generate a sense of postwar justice, and was, to many, experienced as a provocation. The conclusions support an alternative distributive conception of justice and show that local conception of rights, experiences of infringement and needs for redress, demand social, cultural, and economic considerations be taken seriously in transitional justice cases. (shrink)

In this article, I revisit the question of socio-economic transformation in South Africa to illustrate how it connects with human rights, essentially because, as I argue, transformation is unattainable without a comprehensive understanding of the central role of human rights in activating that process. I state the claim that the progressive human rights culture on the basis of which South Africa launched itself from the demise of apartheid into one of the most treasured constitutional democracies globally is (...) noticeably disintegrating, displaying signs of post-independence failures that have bedevilled many other African countries. It leaves unanswered questions with regard to the transitional promise for a better life and equitable opportunities. Not only is the political intent to actualise the project for socio-economic transformation apparently lacking, prospects that the expectations of the impoverished segments of the population may never be fulfilled prompts the need for an in-depth diagnosis of the contrasts that dissociate the country from its constitutional commitment to remedy the injustices of the past, which remain visible in legislation, policies, institutional practices, governance mechanisms and social perceptions that seem to be hardwired to accommodate transformation. I aim to demonstrate that even though South Africa’s constitutional democracy is anchored on a radical undertaking to eradicate the injustices that unreasonably limit options for the larger part of the population, there is no genuine adherence to the constitutional standards for transformation under the present dispensation, which is shaped by misconceived and misdirected priorities at the expense of human rights that lie at the core of the project for socio-economic transformation. I articulate these viewpoints by bringing into sharper focus the connection between human rights and transformation so that perhaps, the arguments may provide conceptual direction in academic discourses and probably also shape policy direction in crafting transformative solutions to the socio-economic exigencies that South Africa is confronted with. (shrink)

An imperfect “politics of justice” seems to be inevitable in the aftermath of genocide. In Rwanda, this is especially true, given the scale of the atrocities, the breadth of participation, and the need to build a justice system from scratch while establishing security and restoring the rule of law. Official contexts for survivor testimony and corresponding perpetrator punishment are crucial for establishing shared norms and narratives, but these processes can destabilize social relations in important ways. Accordingly, without (...) development, these justice mechanisms can undermine social stability and emerging cohesion. The converse is also true: without official contexts of testimony and judgment, development is only material support, and has no recognitive force. Learning from Rwanda’s post-’94 transitional justice, broadly construed, I argue that without development, platforms for testimony and the meting out of punishment yield insufficient recognition and so undermine social stability and emerging cohesion. The converse is also true: without official contexts of testimony and judgment, development is only material support, and lacks crucial recognitive force. The crucial interdependence of development, which provides distributive justice, with criminal proceedings, which offer retributive and restorative justice, has the potential to secure a lasting and stable peace. (shrink)

Pursuing Justice, Second Edition, examines the issue of justice by considering the origins of the idea, formal systems of justice, current global issues of justice, and ways in which justice might be achieved by individuals, organizations, and the global community. Part 1 demonstrates how the idea of justice has emerged over time, starting with religion and philosophy, then moving to the justice as a concern of the state, and finally to the concept of (...) social justice. Part 2 outlines the very different mechanisms used by various nations for achieving state justice, including systems based on common law, civil law, and Islamic law, with a separate discussion of the US justice system. Part 3 focuses on four contemporary issues of justice: war, genocide, slavery, and the environment. Finally, Part 4 shows how individuals and organizations can go about pursuing justice, and describes the rise of global justice. This updated timely book helps students understand the complexities and nuances of a society's pursuit of justice. It provides students with the foundations of global justice systems, integrating Greek philosophies and major religious perspectives into a justice perspective, and contributes to undergraduate understanding of international justice bodies, NGOs, and institutions. New edition is completely updated and revised to achieve relevance for today's students Covers concepts of justice as well as ideas for pursuing and achieving justice Examines how our modern laws began, and traces their evolution to today's laws Presents concepts and issues in justice studies as well as a comparison of several systems of law Teaching resources include discussion questions and real-world examples. (shrink)

In 2020, the Maldives instituted a transitional justice process to address decades of systematic human rights abuses including the widespread use of arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and the forced depopulation of entire island communities. While the country’s decision to confront its violent past is not unusual, the institution it has established to undertake that task is. Rather than institute a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC), refer cases to its Human Rights Commission, or undertake criminal trials (...) in its domestic judicial system, the Maldives has taken the unprecedented step of establishing a temporary Ombudsperson’s Office for Transitional Justice (OTJ). Comparing the OTJ to national human rights institutions and TRCs, this article examines how and why the Maldives’ transitional justice process has taken this unusual form. It suggests that the OTJ represents a new attempt to address the full range of human rights abuses, including violations of social and economic rights, perpetrated by repressive regimes. (shrink)

Genocide is evil or nothing could be. It raises a host of questions about humanity, rights, justice, and reality, which are key areas of concern for philosophy. Strangely, however, philosophers have tended to ignore genocide. Even more problematic, philosophy and philosophers bear more responsibility for genocide than they have usually admitted. In Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide, an international group of twenty-five contemporary philosophers work to correct those deficiencies by showing how philosophy can and should repsond (...) to genocide, particularly in ways that defend human rights. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the continuity of harms and traumas experienced by women before, during and after war and other mass violence. We focus on women because of the particular challenges they face in accessing justice due to patriarchal structures and ongoing discrimination in the political, economic and social, as well as legal spheres, and because of the gendered nature of the crimes and harms they experience. We use the four key pillars of transitional justice (...) identified by the United Nations as a framework to analyse how these harms are addressed in the context of criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reform. We conclude that a gender-transformative approach to transitional justice that focuses on transforming psychosocial, socioeconomic and political power relations in society is needed in order to attain human rights for women and build a sustainable peace. (shrink)

In recent years, transitional justice has become such an important field that it is believed to have become an international norm. Beginning as an initiative to help countries recovering from...

For the past thirty years, the Transitional Justice (TJ) research program has been undergoing a period of transition, simultaneously expanding and consolidating; in one sense, expanding its scope to encompass the measurement of TJ’s impact and the redefinition of ‘transitional’ to include societies afflicted by deep social and economic injustice; and in a second sense, consolidating its practical approach to promoting democracy and peace by developing best practices for institutionalizing TJ. While there have been advances in (...) designing new TJ mechanisms and remedying the concept’s under-theorization, little comparative progress has been made to date in offering a guiding framework for TJ’s push to institutionalize. The thesis of this article is that philosophical pragmatism, specifically Deweyan pragmatism, offers a bevy of resources—a virtual tool-kit—for scholars and practitioners wishing to design TJ-friendly institutions within transitional societies. (shrink)

Big Tech companies such as Meta, the owner of Facebook, are increasingly accused of enabling human rights violations. The proliferation of toxic speech in their digital platforms has been in the background of recent episodes of mass atrocity, the most salient of which recently transpired in Myanmar and Ethiopia. The involvement of Big Tech companies in mass atrocity raises multiple normative and conceptual challenges. One is to properly conceptualize Meta’s responsibility for the circulation of toxic speech. On one view, (...) endorsed by the corporation itself, Meta can be absolved from any significant share of responsibility for these atrocities because toxic speech is the speech of some (rogue) users, hosted but neither created nor endorsed by the company; if anything, Meta is responsible for failing to anticipate and swiftly remove that speech. I will argue that this view is misleading, as it misses the underlying forces crafting toxic speech. Meta’s business model relies on what one might call the algorithmic capture of attention, which it achieves by manipulating its users and by creating an environment in which manipulative practices of some users thrive over others. This fact alone turns the company into a co-creator of toxic speech rather than a mere conduit of the toxic speech of others. As a result, it is safe to claim that Meta bears significant causal responsibility and sufficient moral responsibility for the dissemination of toxic speech, such that it justifies its inclusion in transitional justice processes and grounds its moral obligation to act in ways that advance these processes. (shrink)

This analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. Received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. In response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for understanding (...) the common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. In contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. Only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. (shrink)

This analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. Received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. In response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for understanding (...) the common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. In contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. Only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. (shrink)

This mixed-methods study examines the human rights and human rights education and training (HRET) perspectives and practices of law educators in Myanmar during the democratic transition that ended with the 2021 coup. “Contextual, Theoretical, and Methodological Framing” provides an overview of legal and human rights education in Myanmar, discusses the potential of human rights education in law schools during democratic transitions, addresses why educators’ human rights and human rights education perspectives and practices are important (...) to examine, and presents the research methodology. “Findings” presents findings based on the two phases of research during the transitional period: phase 1 (2015–2017)—law instructors’ perspectives and practices after participating in a multi-year HRET program; and phase 2 (2019–2020)—law instructors’ perspectives on the goals, challenges, and potential of HRET in Myanmar. The third section—“Discussion and Implications”—examines the contextual challenges and opportunities for human rights education as related to (1) critical human rights education, (2) practice-oriented HRET, and (3) administrative policies and practices for human rights and HRET within universities. (shrink)

What do the living owe those who come after them? It is a question nonsensical to some and unanswerable to others, yet tantalizing in its persistence especially among environmentalists. This article makes a new start on the topic of intergenerational justice by bringing together human rights and environmental justice arguments in a novel way that lays the groundwork for a theory of intergenerational environmental justice based in the human rights to clean air, water, and soil. (...) Three issues foundational to such a theory are explored here. First is the broad question of whether justice is applicable to future (or past) generations in any real sense, or do such issues fall under the rubric of superogation. Second, can environmental goods properly be contained in a theory of distributive justice at all, since, superficially at least, they seem different in kind than the usual objects of justice? I will discuss them as “emergent” goods in fact central to contemporary justice distributions. Third, what is the relationship of justice to rights, and how can environmental human rights be included in justice distributions? (shrink)

Many countries have attempted to transition to democracy following conflict or repression, but the basic meaning of transitional justice remains hotly contested. In this book, Colleen Murphy analyses transitional justice - showing how it is distinguished from retributive, corrective, and distributive justice - and outlines the ethical standards which societies attempting to democratize should follow. She argues that transitional justice involves the just pursuit of societal transformation. Such transformation requires political reconciliation, which in (...) turn has a complex set of institutional and interpersonal requirements including the rule of law. She shows how societal transformation is also influenced by the moral claims of victims and the demands of perpetrators, and how justice processes can fail to be just by failing to foster this transformation or by not treating victims and perpetrators fairly. Her book will be accessible and enlightening for philosophers, political and social scientists, policy analysts, and legal and human rights scholars and activists. (shrink)

Works of human rights literature help to ground the formal rights system in an informal rights ethos. Writers have developed four major modes of human rights literature as follows: protest, testimony, lament, and laughter. Through interpretations of poetry in Carolyn Forché’s anthology, Against Forgetting, and novels from Rwanda, the US, and Bosnia, I focus on the mode of lament, the literature of mourning. Lament is a social and ritualized form, the purposes of which are congruent with the (...) aims of transitional justice institutions. Both laments and truth commissions employ grieving narratives to help survivors of human rights trauma bequeath to the ghosts of the past the justice of a monument while renewing the survivors’ capacity for rebuilding civil society in the future. Human rights scholars need a broader, extrajuridical meaning for “transitional justice” if we hope to capture its power. (shrink)

Transitional justice scholars are increasingly concerned with measuring the impact of transitional justice initiatives. Scholars often assume that TJ mechanisms must be properly designed and ordered to achieve lasting effect, but the impact of TJ timing and sequencing has attracted relatively little theoretical or empirical attention. Focusing on Latin America, this article explores variation within the region as to when TJ occurs and the order in which mechanisms are implemented. We utilize qualitative comparative analysis to assess (...) the impact of TJ timing and sequencing on democratic development. We find little evidence for path dependency owing to the chronological order of mechanisms. We do find, however, that amnesties and trials approach a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation in Latin America; trials, however, come closest to being a necessary condition for successful democratic consolidation. (shrink)

Transitional justice refers to the process of dealing with widespread wrongdoing characteristically committed during the course of conflict and/or repression. Examples of such processes include criminal trials, truth commissions, reparations, and memorials. Technology is altering the forms that widespread wrongdoing takes. Technology is also altering the form of processes of transitional justice themselves. This essay provides a map of these changes and their normative implications.

This paper will analyse what it takes to conduct feminist and sensitive research in countries that have seen mass human rights violations. Transitional justice research involves critical examination of difficult topics which raises a number of ethical and methodological issues for both the participants and the researchers. Although empirical research has been a facet of the studies produced in the field, researchers’ accounts of undertaking research in often politically sensitive environments is largely missing from published books and (...) research reports. This paper is informed by personal experiences of doing research in wartime rape in the ethnically and politically divided country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I argue that the researcher’s profile and positionality directly affects the fieldwork and that fieldwork is a dialogical process which is structured by the researcher and the wider political processes in the country. (shrink)

This article presents findings from an interview study of human rights practitioners who assist relatives of the disappeared from Chechnya with their complaints before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). These practitioners work for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The study contributes to the scant literature on NGO litigation before the ECtHR and to the social scientific literature on how human rights are actively practiced. It investigates the NGOs’ intermediary position between the ECtHR and the relatives of (...) the disappeared in Chechnya. Consequently, this article asserts that a significant aspect of this position lies in the practitioner’s capacity to mediate between an ambition to externalize local grievances to the ECtHR and the relatives’ hopes that the ECtHR can bring certainty to the uncertain loss of their disappeared relatives. From this position, several dilemmas emerge as to how international legal mechanisms can provide remedies following disappearances. (shrink)

The article, through the case study of Chile, explores the interconnections between archives, human rights and transitional justice. Chile represents a unique case globally for the early creation of thousands of records documenting the human rights violations committed under Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship. In post-Pinochet Chile, the human rights archives have provided extremely important sources of evidence that have proven crucial in the development of transitional justice mechanisms. Truth commissions have, in turn, created their (...) own archives, which have strongly contributed to later processes of reparation, justice and memory. The article aims to develop a better understanding of the multiple roles that archives have played as tools for achieving truth, justice and reparation over the long transitional period in Chile. The article argues that a combination of several factors and the intervention of different actors led to the archives having a significant impact in the development of subsequent transitional justice mechanisms. (shrink)

The early 1990s saw an increase in conflict in Africa and increasingly brutal tactics of war ranging from using rape as a weapon of war to the amputation oflimbs of citizens. By 2006 nearly half of all high-intensity conflicts were fought on the African continent. In many cases, fragile peace had been achieved in countries that saw some of the most brutal actions of war and experienced the most horrific human rights abuses. These societies embarked on processes ofpost-conflict reconstruction (...) and the search for sustainable peace through national reconciliation and forgiveness in the hope of creating sustainable peace and democracy. This article seeks to engage the notions that underpin Western or retributive justice and African or restorative notions of justice in achieving democratic durability in a post-conflict society. It is premised on the argument that sustainable peace in Africa can only be achieved with a creative mixture ofboth Western and African approaches to transitional justice. (shrink)

The UN has to date not been effective in preventing genocide, and has had only a slightly better record in stopping it. There have been occasions when its interventions has occurred only after a genocide has taken place, and even then its major focus has been on facilitating the provision of aid by non-governmental agencies rather than on the task of tracking down the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. The exceptions of the ICTY and the ICTR are so (...) stark, in this regard, that they only serve to throw light on the many other genocidal events where the UN has not initiated measures against those responsible for carrying them out. In short, as a body the UN has no—until very recently—even approached the fulfillment of its mandate as articulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and only rarely invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in order to intervene physically for the purpose of countering threats to peace or stopping conflict. Its strengths, so far as there have been any, have focused on balancing great power interests with demands to intervene more forcefully. While in the years up to 1989 this could be seen as a way of maintaining the peace (albeit over the broken bodies of victims of genocide in places such as Biafra, Cambodia, and East Timor), since then the UN has been required to act with greater resolve and purpose. The failures of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo must thus be seen as having been brought on by a transition from one international regime to another; from a Cold War regime in which the UN—s main role was one of preventing a third (and possibly nuclear) World War from breaking out, to a post-Cold War regime which appears increasingly to be characterized by the UN searching for a new role in which humanitarian issues are to assume a higher priority than they once did. Whether or not this will continue, of course, will depend on an extremely wide variety of circumstances—and at this time it is likely that only a few of these can accurately be anticipated. (shrink)

Stories told about violence, trauma, and loss inform knowledge of post-conflict societies. Stories have a context which is part of the story-teller’s life narrative. Reasons for silences are varied. This article affirms the importance of telling and listening to stories and notes the significance of silences within transitional justice’s narratives. It does this in three ways. First, it outlines a critical narrative theory of transitional justice which confirms the importance of narrative agency in telling or withholding (...) stories. Relatedly, it affirms the importance of story-telling as a way to explain differentiated gender requirements within transitional justice processes. Second, it examines gendered differences in the ways that women are silenced by shame, choose silence to retain self-respect, use silence as a strategy of survival, or an agential act. Third, it argues that compassionate listening requires gender-sensitive responses that recognize the narrator’s sense of self and needs. (shrink)

This paper examines the importance of reconciliation in post-conflict state-building. We argue that while the economic and political aspects are vital components of the state-building tool-kit, states can hardly be reconstructed without the support of the society. Individuals and communities are central to the re-establishment of peace and democracy. We will conduct a case study analysis focusing on Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter Bosnia). After more than 10 years of international supervision, Bosnia remains fragmented by ethnic tension, and continues to need (...) the guidance of the United Nation’s Office of the High Representative and European Union Special Representative. The Dayton Accord provided little direction for how to proceed with reconciliation beyond a state-centered peace-agreement and constitution. This study suggests that the peacebuilding process that has taken place in Bosnia over the past decade has been unable to foster reconciliation and re-create social trust, two necessary elements for ensuring lasting peace in the aftermath of conflict. (shrink)

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume, distinguished philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, environmentalists and anthropologists discuss some of the most difficult questions (...) of human rights theory and practice: what do human rights require of the global economy? Does it make sense to secure them by force? What do they require in jus post bello contexts of transitional justice? Is global climate change a human rights issue? Is there a human right to democracy? Does the human rights movement constitute moral progress? For students of political philosophy, human rights, peace studies and international relations. (shrink)

COVID-19 has caused far-reaching humanitarian challenges. Amongst the emerging impacts of the pandemic is on the dynamics of human trafficking. This paper presents findings from a multi-methods study interrogating the impacts of COVID-19 on human trafficking in Sudan—a critical source, destination, and transit country. The analysis combines a systematic evidence review, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group with survivors, conducted between January and May of 2021. We find key risks have been exacerbated, and simultaneously, critical infrastructure for identifying (...) victims, providing support, and ensuring accountability of perpetrators has been impeded. Centrally, the co-occurrence of the pandemic and the democratic transition undercut the institutional and governance capacity, limiting the anti-trafficking response and exposing already vulnerable groups to increased risks of human trafficking. Findings point to increased vulnerabilities for individuals with one or more of the following identities: migrants, refugees, females, and informal labourers. (shrink)

Abstract Benefit sharing as envisaged by the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a relatively new idea in international law. Within the context of non-human biological resources, it aims to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable use by ensuring that its custodians are adequately rewarded for its preservation. Prior to the adoption of the CBD, access to biological resources was frequently regarded as a free-for-all. Bioprospectors were able to take resources out of their natural habitat and (...) develop commercial products without sharing benefits with states or local communities. This paper asks how CBD-style benefit-sharing fits into debates of justice. It is argued that the CBD is an example of a set of social rules designed to increase social utility. It is also argued that a common heritage of humankind principle with inbuilt benefit-sharing mechanisms would be preferable to assigning bureaucratic property rights to non-human biological resources. However, as long as the international economic order is characterized by serious distributive injustices, as reflected in the enormous poverty-related death toll in developing countries, any morally acceptable means toward redressing the balance in favor of the disadvantaged has to be welcomed. By legislating for a system of justice-in-exchange covering nonhuman biological resources in preference to a free-for-all situation, the CBD provides a small step forward in redressing the distributive justice balance. It therefore presents just legislation sensitive to the international relations context in the 21st century. (shrink)

Rights define the prevailing relations that constitute a community. They are in turn defined by the character of a given mode of production, and as that changes so too the system of rights. The rights that comprise ‘human rights’ evolved in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and represent the principles of the emerging world order in the 18th and 19th centuries. Only in the aftermath of World War II with the exhaustion or defeat of the European states and (...) Japan was it possible to declare these same principles as belonging to the whole world equally and as intrinsic to all humans - yet within national frameworks. The accumulation of capital on a global scale, however, soon began to undermine the national practice of these human rights. By the end of the 1980s the construction of regional or global ‘enabling frameworks,’ quasi-states for capital, detached from any formal or legitimate means of countervailing political leverage, made human rights appear increasingly like anachronisms. An increasingly violent usurpation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other forms of rights around the world followed. In the absence of a legitimizing set of principles for this new global economy, a growing need for a rationale to govern by fiat becomes the central problem of the day. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. (...) Nuclear wars, natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

This article argues that within the context of settler colonialism, the goal of transitional justice must be decolonisation. Settler colonialism operates according to a logic of elimination that aims to affect the disappearance of Indigenous populations in order to build new societies on expropriated land. This eliminatory logic renders the death of Indigenous peoples “ungrievable”. Therefore, this article proposes a decolonising transitional justice premised on a politics of grief that re-conceptualises Indigenous death as grievable, posing a (...) challenge to the logic of elimination and advancing a “decolonisation of the mind”, and resists a purely affective concept of grief in order to mobilise grief as a political resource to demand transformative structural justice. This article consider deaths at Canada’s Indian Residential Schools as a case study of ungrievability under settler colonialism and the Project of Heart as an illustration of a decolonising form of informal transitional justice. (shrink)

This paper examines the contributions that the international human rights community can make to the definition and framing of a practically effective global ethic, especially in light of ongoing concerns about social and economic justice, environmental issues, and systematic abuses of vulnerable populations. The principal argument is that the human rights movement in all of its dimensions (moral, legal, political) provides the pivotal foundation for a practicable global ethic now and for the foreseeable future. Evidence for (...) the truth of this claim is discerned in the movement's contemporary efforts to intersect explicitly with other areas of international law and politics. Examples adduced include developments with respect to the rights of indigenous peoples, decision making about the environment, and transitional justice. (shrink)

This article offers an account of settler witnessing of residential school survivor testimony that avoids the politics of recognition and the pitfalls of colonial empathy. It knits together the concepts of bearing witness, Indigenous storytelling, and affective reckoning. Following the work of Kelly Oliver, it argues that witnessing involves a reaching beyond ourselves and responsiveness to the agency and self-determination of the other. Given the cultural genocide of residential schools, responsiveness to the other require openness to and nurturing of Indigenous (...) ways of knowing and being. In order to illustrate the complexities and challenges of settler witnessing, the author reflects on her experiences in attending six of the TRC’s national events and, in particular, what she has learned from Frederick “Fredda” Paul, Passamaquoddy Elder, healer, storyteller, and residential school survivor. The article analyzes (1) aesthetics and emotions in the staging of TRC events and (2) making meaning over time and the temporality of transitional justice. (shrink)

Official apologies and truth commissions are increasingly utilized as mechanisms to address human rights abuses. Both are intended to transform inter-group relations by marking an end point to a history of wrongdoing and providing the means for political and social relations to move beyond that history. However, state-dominated reconciliation mechanisms are inherently problematic for indigenous communities. In this paper, we examine the use of apologies, and truth and reconciliation commissions in four countries with significant indigenous populations: Canada, Australia, (...) Peru, and Guatemala. In each case, the reconciliation mechanism differentiated the goal of reconciliation from an indigenous self-determination agenda. The resulting state-centered strategies ultimately failed to hold states fully accountable for past wrongs and, because of this, failed to transform inter-group relations. (shrink)

The study of masculinity, particularly in peacebuilding and transitional justice contexts, is gradually emerging. The article outlines three fissures evident in the embryonic scholarship, that is the privileging of direct violence and its limited focus, the continuities and discontinuities in militarised violence into peace time, and the tensions between new masculinities and wider inclusive social change. The article argues for the importance of making visible the tensions between different masculinities and how masculinities are deeply entangled with systems (...) of power and post-conflict social, political and economic outcomes. An analysis of masculine power within and between the structures aimed at building the peace in societies moving out of violence is considered essential. The article argues for an analysis that moves beyond a preoccupation with preventing violent masculinities from manifesting through the actions of individuals to considering how hidden masculine cultures operate within a variety of hierarchies and social spaces. (shrink)

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume distinguished philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, environmentalists and anthropologists discuss some of the most difficult questions (...) of human rights theory and practice: What do human rights require of the global economy? Does it make sense to secure them by force? What do they require in jus post bello contexts of transitional justice? Is global climate change a human rights issue? Is there a human right to democracy? Does the human rights movement constitute moral progress? For students of political philosophy, human rights, peace studies, and international relations. (shrink)

I assess a justification for the granting of transitional amnesties conditional, at the minimum, upon full disclosure of wrongdoing by perpetrators. According to this rationale, such amnesties are morally legitimate because they foster restorative justice. I distinguish between two conceptions of restorative justice that I call the punishment-deprioritizing and punishment-prescribing conceptions. I argue that while conditional amnesties granted to perpetrators of minor offences conditional upon full disclosure, verbal apology and reparations could promote restorative justice well enough (...) to justify them in the eyes of adherents of the punishment-deprioritizing conception, conditional amnesties in favour of perpetrators of serious human rights abuses, because they are unlikely ever to be conditional upon perpetrators’ carrying out burdensome reparations, are likely to promote restorative justice on the punishment-deprioritizing conception only to a limited extent and not enough to justify them from the standpoint of adherents to this conception. Conditional amnesties, I contend, cannot ever promote restorative justice on the punishment-prescribing conception because it holds that punishment is indispensable for the achievement of the aims of restorative justice and amnesties exempt perpetrators from criminal punishment. (shrink)

Based on the author's award-winning and hugely popular undergraduate course at the University of Texas, this book explores these questions and the fundamentally sociological processes which underlie the quest for morality and justice in ...

Understanding transitional justice and dealing with the past as elements of intergenerational justice puts our focus on the establishment of sustainable, peaceful, social relationships among groups or members thereof within an intergenerational polity or society after violent conflicts, such as genocide or other crimes against humanity. However, what if this process is undermined by institutionally supported denialism? This paper addresses the question of the normative importance of genocide recognition negatively, by examining the way in which subsequent (...) genocide denialism might be considered as a perpetuation of injustice against genocide survivors and their descendants. I will argue that genocide denialism can be considered as a continuation of genocidal violence in epistemic form, that is, an epistemic injustice, whereby members of the victim group are negatively discriminated against with regard to their credibility and intelligibility. Institutional genocide denialism, then, does not just prevent societies from dealing with their genocidal past, but in the first instance constitutes renewed humiliation and violation of the epistemic authority of genocide survivors and their descendants, thus becoming an instance of intergenerational injustice. (shrink)

Many post-conflict and post-transition countries use truth commissions to address the legacy of the past. However, truth commissions are products of the political context and often reflect the power balance at the time of creation. More than half of truth commissions show some form of one-sided treatment. To what extent does this matter? Has the public priced in the political circumstances or does a one-sided truth commission damage expectations of peace? Using an experiment to deal with the endogeneity between the (...) truth commission and context, I examine this question in an original survey in Northern Ireland. The findings show that one-sided processes significantly reduce support for the institution and the perceived prospects of reconciliation, with some support for a normative heuristic of fairness, while mechanisms of ethnic identity and victimization do not explain the differences. The research demonstrates the significance of implementing transitional justice in a just and equitable way. (shrink)

Exhumations aim to restore victims’ dignity because they constitute a step towards their individualisation and recognition as members not only of a particular family but of the human family. This article aims to contribute to the critical assessment of how the notion of human dignity and dignification are used in the context of mechanisms of transitional justice, such as exhumations. It focuses on the Colombian case from an interdisciplinary perspective based on socio-legal studies. The research is (...) based on participant observation, interviews, and thematic analysis of the uses of the term dignity and dignification in the texts of the laws and protocols for the exhumations of victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. It explores two dimensions of dignification, which in turn contributes to the understanding of the complex relationship between victims, the state, and institutions of transitional justice. (shrink)