Redress and the Salience of Economic Justice

Abstract

In the new millennium's second decade, tribunals around the world work to foster justice for the victims of major civil and human rights abuses. In doing so, they also seek to repair continuing damage to the social fabric of affected polities. That so many special tribunals - prosecutorial and reconciliatory - are now grappling with historic injustices is salutary. Long-suffering groups are starting to find their voices; global communities are beginning to listen. And human rights organizations are writing rights to redress into their operating documents. According to observers, the communities of humankind are engaging an "Age of Reconciliation." Yet, the paths to social healing are rubble strewn. Redress initiatives for even fully acknowledged injustices face stiff opposition. Disagreements over culpability and reparative responsibility quickly arise. Even sympathetic governments plead financial incapacity. And traditional legal remedies are slow in coming and limited in reach. Moreover, the formal legal process falls far short of addressing the damage to culture, communities, education and economic and spiritual well-being - damage that persists over generations. This essay employs a multidisciplinary "human capability" approach to extend jurisprudential concepts in order to rethink a key aspect of reparatory justice. It addresses, during economic retrenchment, the salience of a country's promise of economic justice as a key aspect of its larger commitment to reconciliation, or social healing, for the persisting wounds of historic wrongs - wounds inflicted through systemic discrimination, denials of self-determination, violence or culture suppression. Through an examination of Peru' and South Africa's complex reconciliation initiatives, it engages the questions: What does economic justice as future capacity-building, as an integral part of a social healing initiative, look like practically on the ground - where things quickly get messy? And what happens to the mix of individual reparations and economic development when a government is threatened by financial instability? More particularly, what happens to bottom-up plans for economic justice when government and business fail to fund promised individual reparations? When plans for economic restructuring stall? When government cries of "no money" present real political obstacles to even well-conceived reconciliation plans? The essay concludes that in addition to public story-telling and allocation of responsibility, capacity-building for those most harmed through individual payments and economic restructuring and development - economic justice - may well be a key to a public sense of "reconciliation achieved".