Transitional Justice and Displacement
Published: 15 May 2012
Transitional justice mechanisms, including trials, truth commissions and reparations are often employed in the same countries which have also experienced mass displacement. The connection is clear: transitional justice mechanisms are designed to address the consequences of the same large scale violations of human rights and violent conflict that are the cause of mass displacement. Yet, little attention has been paid to the connections between displacement and transitional justice and the way in which transitional justice mechanisms address displacement as a human rights concern.
The International Refugee Rights Initiative recently participated in a research project exploring these issues, organized by the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). IRRI’s Senior Researcher, Lucy Hovil, participated alongside researchers and practitioners from five continents spread among six working groups (criminal justice, gender justice, reparations, restitution, justice-sensitive security sector reform and truth-telling). In particular, Dr. Hovil contributed two pieces, “Gender, Transitional Justice, and Displacement: Challenges in Africa’s Great Lakes Region”, a reflection focused specifically on the Great Lakes region and published alongside a series of other case studies and “The Nexus between Displacement and Transitional Justice: A Gender-Justice Dimension”, a more expansive analysis discussion based on the case studies and additional research, published in Transitional Justice and Displacement, published by the Social Science Research Council.