The transitional justice field has grown significantly both in theory and practice for the past 30 years. Although the UN and human rights NGOs have endorsed retributive justice as an essential component of transitional justice, there is a growing criticism against it. Some of the critics view retributive justice as a “top-down” project imposed by the international community and advocate instead what they call “victim-centered” approaches. This article seeks to qualify this discourse by examining Latin American cases, where the partial success of prosecutions of human rights violators was largely the result of prolonged and tenacious struggles of survivors, family members of victims, and their support organizations. Thus, in Latin America, retributive justice was a “victim-centered,” “bottom-up,” and “locally-owned” project.

The first section distinguishes different types of criticism on the legal punishment of human rights violators, and the second section elucidates the factors which brought about these critiques. Among these factors is the fact that transitional justice “traveled” from Latin America to other parts of the world and expanded from mostly post-dictatorial contexts to include post-conflict societies (or even societies experiencing an ongoing conflict).

The third section reviews the Latin American transitional justice experiences and the fourth section highlights several features of the Latin American experience, most notably the strong desire of survivors and family members for retributive justice and their untiring struggles to achieve the truth and justice. This section also points out that S. P. Huntington’s dictum that “in new democratic regimes, justice comes quickly or it does not come at all” did not hold true in Latin America, largely because Huntington misread the political dynamics behind transitional justice.

The final section critically examines the “victim-centered” discourse beyond Latin American cases. The author cautions against the tendency to see “local people” as a homogeneous entity, emphasizing also that victims’ preferences vary greatly even in the same societies.

Both truth commissions and hybrid tribunals have been widely recognized as feasible and practical options in a post-conflict society for coping with past atrocities.

This essay explores the unique objectives shared by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), even though the frameworks of these two organizations contrast each other. This analysis can help us understand the particularities of the field of transitional justice beyond just reporting actual cases and evaluating them individually.

First, the essay provides a brief outline of the activities of both organizations and focuses on criticisms of these activities by a number of scholars. In doing so, this essay identifies the common core challenges that the TRC and ECCC face in implementing their objectives.

In the arguments provided in this essay, the circumstances under which the TRC and ECCC have to execute their mandates have been specifically identified: the political oppositions are still resisting regime change; the official budget to conduct programs is not sufficient; and many nationals are indifferent to the activities of these two organizations. This essay looks into the legitimacy and merit of the transitional justice programs. By doing so, it does not take a standpoint simply to vindicate the principle of reconciliation or the rule of law. Instead, it tries to imply that, in order to ensure the legitimacy of transitional justice programs among the affected nationals, the mechanism that allows nationals to engage in public activities and various other public settings that recognize victimhood is significantly important.

In this article, the stipulation process of the 2nd article of the Japan-South Korea claim agreement (Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation) in the negotiations to normalize Japan-South Korea diplomatic relations was verified.

As a result, it became clear that the object of the property and claims, which “have been settled completely and finally”between Japan and South Korea, carries out the premise of the legal relation of the colonial term.

Moreover, it became clear that what was actually solved is also only the right of diplomatic protection.

Therefore, in future Japan-Korea relations, in order to conquer colonialism, or in other words, implement“transitional justice”, we have to overcome the Japan-South Korea claim agreement.

This article aims to identify structural factors hampering international efforts to bring peace through justice. It does so by examining the nature of legal norms of international tribunals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in particular. While the literature on human rights trials in transitional and conflict-affected societies is expanding, debate continues as to whether the prosecution of perpetrators of atrocities truly contributes to peace. At its heart lie different understandings of the role and power of legal norms in international politics―the realist version stressing the weakness of law in the absence of a common government, and the idealist version emphasizing its efficacy. The article postulates that, with elaborate judicial procedures to indict and try wrongdoers, international tribunals are more powerful than the realists claim, but they are still weaker than the idealists would hope in that they lack policing agencies and, in the ICC’s case, operate on the principle of “complementarity.” It then argues that this moderate enforcing power of international tribunals, coupled with their growing legitimacy, poses a dilemma for the international community: it can neither fully deter would-be perpetrators from committing atrocities nor persuade perpetrators to stop atrocities and sign peace treaties because neither the threat of prosecution nor the promise of immunity is credible enough. With case studies of Uganda and Sudan, the article demonstrates how this dilemma leaves room for tribunals to develop into political struggles in which authoritarian leaders seek to strengthen or defend the legitimacy of their rule. Depending on who refers the situation to the ICC (the government of a country where conflict is ongoing, or the Security Council, which determines that the situation constitutes “a threat to international peace and security”), the struggle takes on either domestic or international dimensions.

The paper reviews the progression of politics over criminal justice in Indonesia and East Timor from 1998 to 2010 and shows that the lack of sustained political will on the part of the international community and the fluid domestic political situation in Indonesia led to the failure and ultimate collapse of the entire post-conflict justice process. The paper takes up two human rights cases as examples, namely, the political violence surrounding the UN-organized independence ballot in East Timor in 1999 and the Tanjung Priok incident that occurred in Jakarta in 1984. The main struggle was fought over the persecution of high-ranking Indonesian officers who were accused of masterminding, authorizing, or tacitly supporting the crimes against humanity in East Timor. The process was intentionally delayed and the political leadership in Indonesia and the international community both failed to keep up the sustained demand for justice. The failure in this model case eventually affected the domestic judicial process in East Timor and the progress of the Tanjung Priok case in Indonesia.

The paper also describes the cynical worldview of Indonesian high-ranking officers who were involved in the East Timor operation. Finally, the paper draws lessons from these failures. First, Indonesia should have been fully integrated into the post-conflict peacebuilding process. Second, the Indonesian Armed Forces were badly neglected after they left East Timor. Some kind of security sector reform (SSR) would have been desirable, preferably under international supervision. And third, the international community failed to reveal the truth of the conflict, the truth that many western powers were also responsible for the conflict. To address the grievances of the Indonesian soldiers that they alone were accused, an international truth commission could have been established in order to clarify the responsibility of the international actors.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been well analyzed as a component in the establishment of a “third way” by promoting national unity and reconciliation in order to achieve a peaceful political transition following the end of apartheid. Not much attention has been paid, however, to details of how “reconciliation” was designed by utilizing the concepts of local justice. This article argues that local justice norms such as ubuntu were used as rhetoric to direct the purposes of two different processes, granting amnesty and truth telling, in order to promote reconciliation.

The analysis of the political negotiations in South Africa shows that the extensive amnesty granted to the former regime was unavoidable. At the same time, however, the political elites knew the necessity of revealing the past in order to meet the moral demands of the victims. Thus, the idea of establishing a truth commission was proposed to address and share the past with the whole nation.

It was the concept of local justice that led the nation to be convinced that the ultimate goal of pursuing these two processes was “reconciliation”. In this sense, Desmond Tutu played a vital role in interpreting and extending the meaning of the concept of local justice into something necessary which would not only foster forgiveness but also suit the political setting at that time. His rhetoric resulted in rousing the pride of the Africans. This article concludes that the authenticity of local justice norms used in South Africa worked to direct the people to accept the course of “reconciliation”. However, the paper also notes that the concept of local justice was based on the culture of the black Africans. Thus, it argues that the motivation behind the utilization of local justice needs to be taken into account.

This paper discusses the role of reparation for victims of conflict in consolidating the rule of law in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, and its challenges. Reparation for victims, one of the critical areas in the field of transitional justice, pursues restorative justice by restoring the damage caused by past human rights abuses. Ultimately, in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, pursuing restorative justice by implementing reparation aims to consolidate the rule of law structure.

The paper defines the goals of consolidating the rule of law in both the narrow sense, targeting the establishment of procedures and institutions of law in society, and in the broad sense, targeting promoting public goods like human rights as substances of law in society.While previous researches tended only to focus on the effectiveness of specific reparation programs, this paper suggests a theoretical framework that sheds light not only on specific reparation programs, but also on institution-building initiatives such as justice sector reform to sustain reparation.

Based on this framework, the paper analyzes whether reparation combines both the narrow and broad aspects of the rule of law to address past human rights abuses and prevent future atrocities. Although Sierra Leoneʼs reparation program, started in 2008, has benefits for the rule of law by building institutions and promoting human rights norms in society, the analysis in this paper shows that institution building to support reparation is not progressing well enough and points out that Sierra Leone needs to address vulnerabilities in the rule of law in terms of it lacking effective justice mechanisms to support victims in the long run.

The transitional justice field has grown significantly both in theory and practice for the past 30 years. Although the UN and human rights NGOs have endorsed retributive justice as an essential component of transitional justice, there is a growing criticism against it. Some of the critics view retributive justice as a “top-down” project imposed by the international community and advocate instead what they call “victim-centered” approaches. This article seeks to qualify this discourse by examining Latin American cases, where the partial success of prosecutions of human rights violators was largely the result of prolonged and tenacious struggles of survivors, family members of victims, and their support organizations. Thus, in Latin America, retributive justice was a “victim-centered,” “bottom-up,” and “locally-owned” project.

The first section distinguishes different types of criticism on the legal punishment of human rights violators, and the second section elucidates the factors which brought about these critiques. Among these factors is the fact that transitional justice “traveled” from Latin America to other parts of the world and expanded from mostly post-dictatorial contexts to include post-conflict societies (or even societies experiencing an ongoing conflict).

The third section reviews the Latin American transitional justice experiences and the fourth section highlights several features of the Latin American experience, most notably the strong desire of survivors and family members for retributive justice and their untiring struggles to achieve the truth and justice. This section also points out that S. P. Huntington’s dictum that “in new democratic regimes, justice comes quickly or it does not come at all” did not hold true in Latin America, largely because Huntington misread the political dynamics behind transitional justice.

The final section critically examines the “victim-centered” discourse beyond Latin American cases. The author cautions against the tendency to see “local people” as a homogeneous entity, emphasizing also that victims’ preferences vary greatly even in the same societies.

Both truth commissions and hybrid tribunals have been widely recognized as feasible and practical options in a post-conflict society for coping with past atrocities.

This essay explores the unique objectives shared by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), even though the frameworks of these two organizations contrast each other. This analysis can help us understand the particularities of the field of transitional justice beyond just reporting actual cases and evaluating them individually.

First, the essay provides a brief outline of the activities of both organizations and focuses on criticisms of these activities by a number of scholars. In doing so, this essay identifies the common core challenges that the TRC and ECCC face in implementing their objectives.

In the arguments provided in this essay, the circumstances under which the TRC and ECCC have to execute their mandates have been specifically identified: the political oppositions are still resisting regime change; the official budget to conduct programs is not sufficient; and many nationals are indifferent to the activities of these two organizations. This essay looks into the legitimacy and merit of the transitional justice programs. By doing so, it does not take a standpoint simply to vindicate the principle of reconciliation or the rule of law. Instead, it tries to imply that, in order to ensure the legitimacy of transitional justice programs among the affected nationals, the mechanism that allows nationals to engage in public activities and various other public settings that recognize victimhood is significantly important.

In this article, the stipulation process of the 2nd article of the Japan-South Korea claim agreement (Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation) in the negotiations to normalize Japan-South Korea diplomatic relations was verified.

As a result, it became clear that the object of the property and claims, which “have been settled completely and finally”between Japan and South Korea, carries out the premise of the legal relation of the colonial term.

Moreover, it became clear that what was actually solved is also only the right of diplomatic protection.

Therefore, in future Japan-Korea relations, in order to conquer colonialism, or in other words, implement“transitional justice”, we have to overcome the Japan-South Korea claim agreement.

This article aims to identify structural factors hampering international efforts to bring peace through justice. It does so by examining the nature of legal norms of international tribunals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in particular. While the literature on human rights trials in transitional and conflict-affected societies is expanding, debate continues as to whether the prosecution of perpetrators of atrocities truly contributes to peace. At its heart lie different understandings of the role and power of legal norms in international politics―the realist version stressing the weakness of law in the absence of a common government, and the idealist version emphasizing its efficacy. The article postulates that, with elaborate judicial procedures to indict and try wrongdoers, international tribunals are more powerful than the realists claim, but they are still weaker than the idealists would hope in that they lack policing agencies and, in the ICC’s case, operate on the principle of “complementarity.” It then argues that this moderate enforcing power of international tribunals, coupled with their growing legitimacy, poses a dilemma for the international community: it can neither fully deter would-be perpetrators from committing atrocities nor persuade perpetrators to stop atrocities and sign peace treaties because neither the threat of prosecution nor the promise of immunity is credible enough. With case studies of Uganda and Sudan, the article demonstrates how this dilemma leaves room for tribunals to develop into political struggles in which authoritarian leaders seek to strengthen or defend the legitimacy of their rule. Depending on who refers the situation to the ICC (the government of a country where conflict is ongoing, or the Security Council, which determines that the situation constitutes “a threat to international peace and security”), the struggle takes on either domestic or international dimensions.

The paper reviews the progression of politics over criminal justice in Indonesia and East Timor from 1998 to 2010 and shows that the lack of sustained political will on the part of the international community and the fluid domestic political situation in Indonesia led to the failure and ultimate collapse of the entire post-conflict justice process. The paper takes up two human rights cases as examples, namely, the political violence surrounding the UN-organized independence ballot in East Timor in 1999 and the Tanjung Priok incident that occurred in Jakarta in 1984. The main struggle was fought over the persecution of high-ranking Indonesian officers who were accused of masterminding, authorizing, or tacitly supporting the crimes against humanity in East Timor. The process was intentionally delayed and the political leadership in Indonesia and the international community both failed to keep up the sustained demand for justice. The failure in this model case eventually affected the domestic judicial process in East Timor and the progress of the Tanjung Priok case in Indonesia.

The paper also describes the cynical worldview of Indonesian high-ranking officers who were involved in the East Timor operation. Finally, the paper draws lessons from these failures. First, Indonesia should have been fully integrated into the post-conflict peacebuilding process. Second, the Indonesian Armed Forces were badly neglected after they left East Timor. Some kind of security sector reform (SSR) would have been desirable, preferably under international supervision. And third, the international community failed to reveal the truth of the conflict, the truth that many western powers were also responsible for the conflict. To address the grievances of the Indonesian soldiers that they alone were accused, an international truth commission could have been established in order to clarify the responsibility of the international actors.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been well analyzed as a component in the establishment of a “third way” by promoting national unity and reconciliation in order to achieve a peaceful political transition following the end of apartheid. Not much attention has been paid, however, to details of how “reconciliation” was designed by utilizing the concepts of local justice. This article argues that local justice norms such as ubuntu were used as rhetoric to direct the purposes of two different processes, granting amnesty and truth telling, in order to promote reconciliation.

The analysis of the political negotiations in South Africa shows that the extensive amnesty granted to the former regime was unavoidable. At the same time, however, the political elites knew the necessity of revealing the past in order to meet the moral demands of the victims. Thus, the idea of establishing a truth commission was proposed to address and share the past with the whole nation.

It was the concept of local justice that led the nation to be convinced that the ultimate goal of pursuing these two processes was “reconciliation”. In this sense, Desmond Tutu played a vital role in interpreting and extending the meaning of the concept of local justice into something necessary which would not only foster forgiveness but also suit the political setting at that time. His rhetoric resulted in rousing the pride of the Africans. This article concludes that the authenticity of local justice norms used in South Africa worked to direct the people to accept the course of “reconciliation”. However, the paper also notes that the concept of local justice was based on the culture of the black Africans. Thus, it argues that the motivation behind the utilization of local justice needs to be taken into account.

This paper discusses the role of reparation for victims of conflict in consolidating the rule of law in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, and its challenges. Reparation for victims, one of the critical areas in the field of transitional justice, pursues restorative justice by restoring the damage caused by past human rights abuses. Ultimately, in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, pursuing restorative justice by implementing reparation aims to consolidate the rule of law structure.

The paper defines the goals of consolidating the rule of law in both the narrow sense, targeting the establishment of procedures and institutions of law in society, and in the broad sense, targeting promoting public goods like human rights as substances of law in society.While previous researches tended only to focus on the effectiveness of specific reparation programs, this paper suggests a theoretical framework that sheds light not only on specific reparation programs, but also on institution-building initiatives such as justice sector reform to sustain reparation.

Based on this framework, the paper analyzes whether reparation combines both the narrow and broad aspects of the rule of law to address past human rights abuses and prevent future atrocities. Although Sierra Leoneʼs reparation program, started in 2008, has benefits for the rule of law by building institutions and promoting human rights norms in society, the analysis in this paper shows that institution building to support reparation is not progressing well enough and points out that Sierra Leone needs to address vulnerabilities in the rule of law in terms of it lacking effective justice mechanisms to support victims in the long run.