North-South Skirmishes Over Transitional Justice: 1975-2000

Abstract

The years 1975–2000 represent the era of a series of opening skirmishes in the protracted battle over transitional justice. It is in this period that transitional justice emerged as a creative site of engagement for political scientists, lawyers, and activists concerned with the search for new beginnings in societies undergoing political transitions. Initially anchored in the experiences and practices of states in the Global South, the discourse of transitional justice came to be internationalized and dominated by law, legal practices, lawyers and legalism. It did not, however, constitute a field of law as such. This had implications for the North-South battle over transitional justice. Whereas related fields of law such as international criminal law or human rights law were debated and disputed in the General Assembly, the International Law Commission and international courts, transitional justice, while an increasingly technocratic discourse, did not have central institutional arenas for contestations. The story of transitional justice between 1975 and 2000 thus illustrates how a shift from international law to normativity outside law (‘informal law’, ‘soft law’, ‘standards’, ‘best practices’) can also mean the loss of venue for articulating alternative agendas that challenge Global North dominance in the development of international norms. But the absence of a clear battleground did not preclude skirmishing over the field. The period between 1975-2000 may not have witnessed a clear North-South battle over transitional justice, but it did see the drawing of battle lines: is transitional justice inherently liberal; does it permit compromises; and who possesses epistemic authority in this discourse?

Keywords: transitional justice, Global South, battle, liberalism, deformalisation