Human Rights, Democratisation and the Politics of Historic Justice

Abstract

Coming to terms with human rights violations in the past is a rapidly growing field both of political activity and scholarly research, particularly since the 1990s. The past two decades have seen a proliferation of restitution cases, official apologies, and debates on reparation schemes all over the world. Historic injustices, from genocide and slavery to forced assimilation and coercive sterilization, that had been official state policy in the past, have become subject to political and public debates and struggles for reparations on the part of the victims. Concepts such as reparations, restitution, redress, truth commissions, and restorative justice indicate a series of efforts to cope with historic injustices, human rights violations and atrocities including genocide, slavery, internment, and torture, committed or condoned by governments. Particularly since the end of the Cold War we can observe a “discourse explosion” about historical injustice and restorative justice. However, so far much of this research has focused on legal issues and/or the role of institutions, such as the transition from a totalitarian or authoritarian state to democratic institutions. The policy processes as such that have led to reparation policies and the dynamics that drive them, however, are not yet well understood. In order to better understand these dynamics, we need to study not only the legal and political institutions but also the cultural context, the role of civil society, of collective identities, collective memories, and the construction and reconstruction of meaning in the policy process itself. Whereas in some instances, governments have actually established committees of inquiry, reparation policies, sites of collective memory and/or issued apologies, in other cases struggles for historic justice remained largely unsuccessful. Also, such policies have taken very different forms and have been implemented in different ways. The panel will explore the formation and implementation of policies of historic justice, or the lack thereof, in their respective cultural and historic context. It will and pay specific attention to the relation between democratization and the politics of historic justice: are the former rather the precondition or the outcome of the latter? Is it a harmonious or rather an ambivalent relation? How do different stages or understandings of democratization relate to the politics of historic justice? Which role do civil society actors and specifically victims' organizations play in the policy process? We specifically welcome case studies that examine the dynamics of policy processes in relation to historic justice, human rights and democratization.

Title	Details
Norm-Related Discrimination and the Politics of Reparations. Victims'' Struggles for Rehabilitation and Reparations for Involuntary Sterilisation	View Paper Details
Biopolitical Rationality, Humanrights Violations and Struggles for Historic Justice: Coming to Terms with Sterilisation Policies	View Paper Details
Just Truth? A Study on the Pattern of Implementation of Truth Commissions'' Recommendations	View Paper Details
Reparations for Victims of Coercive Sterilisation in Norway: Consensus as Hindrance to Learning?	View Paper Details
Memory and Identity v. Truth and Transition? Dealing with the Past and Democratisation in Northern Ireland	View Paper Details
“Bringing fighters together”. A comparative study of peacebuilding and transitional justice in Angola and Mozambique	View Paper Details
Law as a Means of Politics of the Past: The case of Argentina	View Paper Details
Slow Motion Democratization: How the Gay Movement Transformed Human Rights in West-Germany after 1945	View Paper Details