Transitional justice is a dynamic concept that has been developing along with recent historical experiences and the dilemmas they highlight. Nevertheless, the core questions since the emergence of the field find their normative framework within international law on human rights. On the other hand, despite the fact that the aim of securing peace was linked to the protection and implementation of human rights world-wide from the beginning, sixty five years ago, the conversion of peace into a legal category of human right has received definite outlines only during the last decades. This juridification tendency culminates to date with the codification process undertaken since 2010 by the UN Human Rights Council and by its Advisory Committee, as well as with the expectation of the approval in 2015 of the Universal Declaration on the Human Right to Peace by the UN General Assembly. Central to this codification is a concept of peace which goes beyond the absence of armed conflict and demands both the elimination of all types of violence (whether direct, structural or cultural) and the promotion of the proper economic, social and cultural conditions of civilians. Such a positive concept includes standards in human security, disarmament, control of private military and security companies, peace education and training, development, environment, peacekeeping, rights of victims and vulnerable groups, right to refugee status and to emigrate.
This legal constellation of the human right to peace has to be located within the general field of human rights, but also in relation to the human rights-based approach to transitional justice in particular. The talk will articulate this link. Moreover, it will be argued that the legal content of the right to peace reflects a growing realization that justice and peace can promote and sustain one another, which affects again central issues of transitional justice discourses
