Why do we need a Transformative Justice Theory? A Gender Perspective

One of the main criticisms against transitional justice theory and practice comes from feminist scholars: transitional justice falls short of comprehending and addressing structural violence and the root causes of the conflict in a post-conflict society. From a feminist perspective ‘negative peace’ does not address the structural problems that women suffer, but only focuses on the proximate causes of the conflicts. Thus, violence against women creates a continuum in post-conflict situations. Only very recently have feminist transitional justice scholars started to consider the concept of positive peace as an opportunity to address the structural causes of the violations against women in particular. As is known, transitional justice is the parallel version of the ‘conflict resolution’ concept in legal terms. However, conflict resolution has been comprehensively criticised in the political science field because it does not address the root causes of the conflict. Instead, a new concept has been put forward by John Paul Lederach: ‘conflict transformation’. The heated debates and arguments about this have not yet had any broad repercussions in the law field. Legal researchers have not paid due care to the ‘conflict transformation’ theory in order to apply it to the legal context as ‘transformative justice’, except for a few scholars. I aim to fill this gap and contribute to the theory of transformative justice by applying the theory of ‘conflict transformation’ to the legal field. This paper analyses the theory of conflict transformation by bringing forward the main arguments of three scholars who contributed to the theory of conflict transformation most, John Paul Lederach, Kumar Rupesinghe, and John Galtung. Then, I analyse their main arguments and present particular criteria upon my own reading of the theory of conflict transformation through a gender lens. I shall discuss the points where gender and conflict transformation intersect. Thus, rather than a comprehensive analysis of the concept of conflict transformation, I shall address the question of why this theory offers more to women than conflict resolution theory (i.e. transitional justice) does. More importantly, what difference does conflict transformation make to change the discourse for women? To put it another way, do we need a change in the theory and why? What can conflict transformation offer for women? Why do we need to apply conflict transformation to improve the theory of transformative justice? What are the problems with current transitional justice from a gendered perspective and how can transformative justice deal with these problems?