The Place of Apology in Post-Conflict Societies: Violent Non-State Actors and Transitional Justice

Transitional justice scholarship has long debated the tension between justice and reconciliation, and the role of symbolic mechanisms, such as apologies, in addressing past violence. While this literature has focused almost exclusively on states, it has largely neglected apologies issued by violent non-state actors. This paper addresses this gap by examining why terrorist organizations apologize and how such apologies function within post-conflict justice and reconciliation processes. Through a comparative analysis of two contrasting cases: the Basque ETA’s 2018 apology, issued unilaterally and outside any peace process, and the FARC’s 2016 apology, delivered as part of Colombia’s institutionalized peace agreement. The paper integrates the reconciliation frameworks of Christopher Mitchell and Raymond Cohen. Methodologically, it relies on qualitative process tracing based on primary sources like official statements, speeches, media coverage and secondary literature. The paper advances three main arguments. First, in both cases apologies were driven primarily by considerations of political survival following the erosion of legitimacy and the exhaustion of armed struggle, rather than by a profound moral transformation. Second, the findings show that institutional embedding within a peace process constitutes a facilitating but not sufficient condition for a meaningful apology: despite being part of a comprehensive transitional justice framework, the FARC’s 2016 apology was widely perceived as shallow and normatively insufficient, much like ETA’s unilateral apology. Third, and most importantly, the analysis demonstrates that the discursive nature of the apology itself, its clarity, degree of responsibility-taking, and treatment of victims, is the decisive factor shaping its normative and social reception. More broadly, the paper contributes to debates in transitional justice by showing that apologies by violent non-state actors tend to function as dual acts: instruments of political reintegration and re-legitimation on the one hand and constrained moral gestures on the other. While such apologies may support political stabilization and organizational survival, the two cases examined here suggest that, when poorly formulated, they not only fail to fulfill their reconciliatory promise but may also generate resentment, reinforce victims’ sense of injustice, and reignite moral and political disputes over responsibility and memory. The findings therefore caution against overly optimistic views of apologies as symbolic justice mechanisms and underscore the enduring tension between reconciliation and accountability in post-conflict societies.