Proportionate and Authentic Victim Participation: Building Authentic Consensus for Transitional Justice and Sustainable Peace

In our paper we would link 1) the politics of knowledge production in transitional justice; and 2) conceptual and practice-oriented reflections on transformative justice; This paper, which draws on our forthcoming UNDP report, "Lessons Learned in Transitional Justice", traces the politics of knowledge production to practices of citizen and victim engagement in transitional societies. Our observations, in considering over 20 transitional justice situations, the literature, and United Nations policy, trace transitional justice practices in process selection, design, and implementation to a scarcity of guidance and efficacy in victim identification, engagement, and mobilisation. Proportionate and representative participation of victims in selection, design, and implementation of transitional justice processes, we observe, enables shared victim empathy based on suffered harm rather than ethno-regional or other identity. Enabling victim solidarity we observe, also drives a critical victim role in ensuring that transitional justice processes are non discriminatory in selection, design, and function. To this end, and drawing on preliminary findings of a joint World Bank-United Nations quantitative study of the effect of transitional justice processes and human rights institutions on conflict prevention, that I'm also co-authoring, we identify the prioritisation of inclusive, non-discriminatory approaches, best enabled by proportionately representative victim participation. Non-discrimination, therefore, constitutes the critical guiding principle in establishing transitional justice processes. We highlight, for example, Colombia, where victim participation drove a shift away from a discriminatory process which allowed significant commutation of sentence for government and government-aligned forces. Informed victim participation prioritised the equal treatment of all parties, thereby shifting the process towards the application of restricted liberty for all accused. The deepened breadth of societal consensus underpinning this approach diminished the vulnerability of victim groups to violent mobilisation based on nefarious appeals to the idea that those fighting for them faced selective justice. This transformative approach, advances inclusivity, justice and sustainable peace for enhanced transformative affect in transitional justice.