The Standing Group on Human Rights, Transitional Justice and the Politics of Transformation aims at linking aspects of human rights, transitional justice, democratisation, political transition, politics of transformation and politics which are relevant for research.

We want to bring together a broad range of topics in the field of political science research that have so far been side issues or sub-disciplines in the different areas of political science research, such as development studies, regional studies, political theory, conflicts studies, etc. In doing so the Standing Group offers a forum to discuss political research on human rights, transitional justice and the politics of transformation from different angles and perspectives: empirical and theoretical, analytical and normative, historical and contemporary, local, regional and global.

The Standing Group focuses its cross-cutting research, publications, seminars and networking activities on topics such as human rights norms and standards in international relations; transitional justice and other post-conflict processes; global justice and peace movements; as well as on the politics of transformation. It harnesses the synergies of topics and issues that deal broadly with human rights in political science, including international relations, gender, law and politics. The interaction of duties and responsibilities of states and non-state actors and aspects of social movements and civic organisations, international organisations as well as normative changes in the wide field of human rights, peace and justice are highlighted in a variety of activities and events.

The initiative to set up this Standing Group was taken following the high attendance at the Section on Human Rights and Transitional Justice as well as its Panels during the 2011 ECPR General Conference in Reykjavik, which showed that there is a growing interest in discussing future methodological advances in this field. The Papers and contributions to the Panels critically examined how transitional justice can contribute to the promotion of human rights and transformation processes in post-conflict countries from the angle of international organizations and courts, NGOs, domestic political movements, transition processes, peace building, institution building, gender or democratisation.