Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Times of Crises

As we witness heightened levels of political violence, large-scale human rights abuses, and protracted conflicts worldwide, the question of what human rights and transitional justice mean in an increasingly fractured global context demands urgent attention. Recent, ongoing and unprecedented atrocities require scholars and practitioners to contend with the pressing question of: what roles do human rights and transitional justice play in times of expanding and intersecting crises? The current state of the international legal order has cast doubt on both the credibility and resilience of the human rights regime as well as the viability of transitional justice. At the same time, expanding and ongoing crises have prompted new actors, forms and spaces for human rights and transitional justice activism to emerge. To explore this , we invite panel and paper proposals interested in interrogating the challenges, limitations, failures, contributions, possibilities and implications of human rights and transitional justice in times of crises. Potential topics include, but are by no means restricted to: - How are human rights and transitional justice frameworks responding to current, persistent and emerging crises across the globe? What new strategies are being developed? - What are the possibilities and contributions of human rights and transitional justice for emerging, ongoing and unprecedented crises? - What are the implications of expanding crises on the future of human rights and transitional justice as fields of study and practice? - What procedural or conceptual limitations exist within current human rights and transitional justice mechanisms? - How do these limitations affect their effectiveness, particularly in contexts where the international order is unstable or contested? - What actors, spaces, and forms of human rights and transitional justice are emerging? How are these redefining or challenging the fields’ norms or practices? - How does the prioritization of certain crises over others shape human rights and transitional justice agendas? - How does prioritizing whose crises matter on the international agenda include or exclude certain actors, practices, or discourses on human rights and transitional justice? - What roles do memory work, documentation, and archival practices play in contexts of instability, protracted conflict, or recurring crises? How can these contribute to the defence of human rights and justice when conventional mechanisms are limited or inaccessible? The Section Co-Chairs wish to encourage early career as well as established scholars to participate in ECPR General Conferences and Workshops. This section aims to place scholars at different stages of their career in conversation with each other, in order to encourage, inspire and challenge a new generation of political scientists. As in previous years, the Co-Chairs aim to create an intellectual community during the ECPR General conference, allowing for inspiring conversations and exchanges throughout the section’s consecutive panels and beyond (e.g. through joint publication projects after the conference, such as blog contributions or a Special Issue). Finally, the Human Rights and Transitional Justice ECPR Standing Group will award the prize for the Best Paper in the section “Human Rights and Transitional Justice in Times of Crises”. The Section organizers will choose the best paper among nominations done by discussants in each of the panels. The winner will be provided with a certificate, and opportunities for further award and publicity from ECPR.