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Liberal Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: What Place for Socioeconomic Concerns?

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Book cover Justice and Economic Violence in Transition

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Transitional Justice ((SSTJ,volume 5))

Abstract

Recent scholarship in transitional justice has increasingly acknowledged that both the practice and study of justice in transition have focused almost exclusively upon violations of civil and political rights, and particularly of bodily integrity, to the relative exclusion of violations of economic, social, and cultural rights. This chapter examines one dimension of this emergent discussion, arguing that the exclusion of “socioeconomic concerns” derives in part from the degree to which many contemporary transitional justice processes are embedded in or shaped by liberal peacebuilding missions. It argues that as peacebuilding operations focus primarily upon democratization and marketization, they might be expected to focus upon the creation or restoration of core civil and political rights.  Further, such operations may either overlook or be unable to respond to demands to address socioeconomic concerns, which may conflict with imperatives of marketization. The chapter calls for caution in response to calls for transitional justice to address socioeconomic concerns, given that the former is already overburdened with expectations and may not be well suited to respond to the latter.

I would like to thank Amy Ross for extensive discussions and comments on an earlier draft of this chapter and Dustin Sharp’s incisive comments and suggestions. Any errors are of course mine alone.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dustin Sharp, “Addressing Economic Violence in Times of Transition: Toward a Positive-Peace Paradigm for Transitional Justice” in this volume; see also Sharp, “Beyond the Post-Conflict Checklist: Linking Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice Through the Lens of Critique,” Chicago Journal of International Law 14 (2013): 165–196.

  2. 2.

    Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Justice as Peace? Liberal Peacebuilding and Strategies of Transitional Justice,” Global Society 21, no. 4 (October 2007): 579–591.

  3. 3.

    The literature on transitional justice is extensive, so I note only a few theoretical and comparative sources here: Neil Kritz, ed., Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995); Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York: Routledge, 2001); Chandra Lekha Sriram, Confronting Past Human Rights Violations: Justice vs Peace in Times of Transition (London: Frank Cass, 2004); Bronwyn Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 30 (2008): 95–118; Tricia Olsen, Leigh Payne, and Andrew Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2010).

  4. 4.

    See, e.g., Olsen, Payne and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance; Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (New York: Norton, 2011); Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies: The Impact on Human rights and Democracy (London: Routledge, 2009); Oskar N.T. Thoms, James Ron, and Roland Paris, “State-Level Effects of Transitional Justice: What do We Know?” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4, no. 3 (2010): 329–354.

  5. 5.

    Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Justice as Peace? Liberal Peacebuilding and Strategies of Transitional Justice,” Global Society 21, no. 4 (October 2007): 579–591.

  6. 6.

    United Nations Secretary General, “The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies,” UN Doc. S/2004/616 (August 23, 2004); “The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies,” UN Doc. S/2011/634 (October 12, 2011). This is not to suggest that there is one single approach to transitional justice, although such policy documents do treat it as a relatively stable “toolkit.”

  7. 7.

    World Bank, World Development Report 2011, Conflict Security and Development (2011).

  8. 8.

    United Nations, IDDRS Module on Transitional Justice module 6.20 (2010); Chandra Lekha Sriram and Johanna Herman, “DDR and Transitional Justice: Bridging the Divide?” Conflict, Security & Development 9, no. 4 (2009): 455–474.

  9. 9.

    Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Allan Gerson, “Peace Building: The Private Sector’s Role,” American Journal of International Law 95 (2001): 102–119; Angelika Rettberg, “The Private Sector, Peacebuilding, and Economic Recovery: A Challenge for the UNPBA,” CIPS and NUPI Working Paper (Ottawa 2010).

  10. 10.

    Lars Waldorf, “Anticipating the Past: Transitional Justice and Socio-Economic Wrongs,” Social & Legal Studies 21 (2012): 173. See generally Michael Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review 80, no. 4 (December 1986): 1151–1169; Anne-Marie Slaughter, “International Law in a World of Liberal States,” European Journal of International Law 6 (1995): 53–81; c.f. José E. Alvarez, “Do Liberal States Behave Better? A Critique of Slaughter’s Liberal Theory,” European Journal of International Law 12 (2001): 183–246.

  11. 11.

    Roland Paris, “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism,” International Security 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997): 54–89; Paris, At War’s End.

  12. 12.

    Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000); Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” International Security 20, no. 1 (1995): 5–38. See generally Mahmood Monshipouri, Democratization, Liberalization, and Human Rights in the Third World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995).

  13. 13.

    Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, “Civil War and the Security Dilemma,” in Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, ed. Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 15–37; Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 27–47.

  14. 14.

    Stephen D. Krasner, “Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States,” International Security 29, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 85–120.

  15. 15.

    Roland Paris, “Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism,” 56.

  16. 16.

    Many critical social theory scholars challenge the free market as destructive per se as well of course. See, e.g., David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  17. 17.

    Ted Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 1993), 138.

  18. 18.

    For a critique of the push for rapid elections, see Simon Chesterman, You, The People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and State-Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 204–235. In Peace as Governance: Power-Sharing, Armed Groups and Contemporary Peace Negotiations (London: Palgrave 2008), I discuss challenges for the participation of armed groups.

  19. 19.

    Roland Paris, At War’s End, 44–46.

  20. 20.

    Kora Andrieu, “Civilizing Peacebuilding: Transitional Justice, Civil Society and the Liberal Paradigm,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 5 (2010): 537–558.

  21. 21.

    Andrieu, “Civilizing Peacebuilding,” 541; Rosemary Nagy, “Transitional Justice as Global Project: Critical Reflections,” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2008): 275–289; Roger MacGinty and Oliver Richmond, “Myth or Reality: Opposing Views on the Liberal Peace and Post-war Reconstruction,” The Liberal Peace and Post-War Reconstruction: Myth or reality? ed. Roger MacGinty and Oliver Richmond (London: Routledge 2009), 1–8.

  22. 22.

    See the debates in Oliver P. Richmond and Audra Mitchell, eds., Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism (London: Palgrave 2012); Oliver Richmond, “From Peacebuilding as Resistance to Peacebuilding as Liberation,” and Annika Björkdahl, “Deliberating and Localizing Just Peace,” Rethinking Peacebuilding: The Quest for Just Peace in the Middle East and the Western Balkans ed. Karin Aggestam and Annika Björkdahl (London: Routledge, 2012), 64–92; c.f. Roland Paris, “Saving Liberal Peacebuilding,” Review of International Studies 36 (2010), 363 and Sharp, “Beyond the Post-Conflict Checklist,” and Lambourne, “Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding After Mass Violence”.

  23. 23.

    See, e.g., Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000); Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, eds., The Political Economy of Armed Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003). The contribution of economic causes to cycles of violence is also emphasized in the 2011 World Development Report in part I. See also James Ahearne, “Neoliberal Economic Policies and Post-Conflict Peace-Building: A Help or Hindrance to Durable Peace?” POLIS Journal 2 (Winter 2009): 1–44 at http://www.polis.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/students/student-journal/ma-winter-09/james-ahearne-winter-09_OnlinePDF.pdf.

  24. 24.

    Roland Paris, At War’s End, 112–134, discusses this issue in peacebuilding operations in Central America. These missions often failed to address socioeconomic grievances and inequalities. Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Dynamics of Conflict in Central America,” Exploring Subregional Conflict: Opportunities for Conflict Prevention, ed. Chandra Lekha Sriram and Zoe Nielsen (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 131–167.

  25. 25.

    Ahearne, “Neoliberal Economic Policies and Post-Conflict Peace-Building,” 6.

  26. 26.

    See, e.g., Frances Stewart, “Policies Towards Horizontal Inequalities in Post-Conflict Reconstruction,” (no date), at http://www.hicn.org/papers/Stewart_philadelphia_OnlinePDF.pdf (last accessed 3 June 2006).

  27. 27.

    Ahearne, “Neoliberal Economic Policies and Post-Conflict Peace-Building,” 28.

  28. 28.

    Dominik Zaum and Christine Cheng, “Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding,” City University of New York Graduate Center, Program on States and Security (not dated).

  29. 29.

    Michael Pugh, “Local Agencies and Political Economies of Peacebuilding,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11, no. 2 (2011): 308–320; Melissa T. Labonte, “From Patronage to Peacebuilding? Elite Capture and Governance from Below in Sierra Leone,” African Affairs 111, no. 442 (2011): 90-115.

  30. 30.

    Sabine Kurtenbach, “Why is Liberal Peacebuilding so Difficult? Some Lessons from Central America,” GIGA Working Paper No 59 (September 2007).

  31. 31.

    Sriram, “Justice as Peace?”

  32. 32.

    This may particularly be the case if reparations are part of the transitional justice process. See discussion of the project on reparations at the International Center for Transitional Justice: http://www.ictj.org/en/tj/782.html. Recent scholarship also demonstrates that there is a political economy of transitional justice, whereby financial constraints do affect a country’s transitional justice choices. See Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter, “At What Cost? The Political Economy of Transitional Justice,” Taiwan Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (July 2010): 165–184.

  33. 33.

    Paige Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2009): 321–367. Christine Bell notes that transitional justice might rightly be understood as just a subset of a range of issues to be dealt with during transition, including transitional economics and governance. “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity, and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field’,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3 (2009): 5–27, 23.

  34. 34.

    This seems to be the claim made by Zinaida Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2008): 266–291, at 267.

  35. 35.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 272.

  36. 36.

    Louise Arbour, “Economic and Social Justice for Societies in Transition,” Speech at New York University School of Law (25 October 2006), http://www.chrgj.org/docs/Arbour_25_October_2006_OnlinePDF.pdf.

  37. 37.

    Arbour, “Economic and Social Justice for Societies in Transition,” 2.

  38. 38.

    Lisa J. Laplante, “On the Indivisibility of Rights: Truth Commissions, Reparations, and the Right to Development,” Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal 10 (2007): 141–177.

  39. 39.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 268; Evelyne Schmid, “Liberia’s Truth Commission Report: Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Transitional Justice,” PRAXIS: The Fletcher Journal of Human Security XXIV (2009): 5–28.

  40. 40.

    Ruben Carranza, “Plunder and Pain: Should Transitional Justice Engage with Corruption and Economic Crimes?” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2008): 329.

  41. 41.

    Rama Mani, Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War (Oxford: Polity Press, 2002).

  42. 42.

    Lisa J. Laplante, “Transitional Justice and Peace Building,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2008): 351. In my interviews in Sierra Leone in 2011, I was repeatedly told that the “real trauma” for most people in the country was poverty.

  43. 43.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 267; Schmid, “Liberia’s Truth Commission Report,” 14–15.

  44. 44.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 315, points to the challenge of creating a sense of ownership of transitional justice processes in impoverished countries if economic issues are excluded. This dovetails with a wider strain of arguments in peacebuilding and transitional justice literature for more “bottom-up” approaches. See, e.g., Patricia Lundy and Mark McGovern, “Whose Justice? Rethinking Transitional Justice from the Bottom Up,” Journal of Law and Society 35, no. 2 (June 2008): 265–292, at 265.

  45. 45.

    Laplante, “Transitional Justice and Peace Building,” 333.

  46. 46.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 287.

  47. 47.

    Arbour, “Economic and Social Justice for Societies in Transition,” 4.

  48. 48.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 310.

  49. 49.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 311–314.

  50. 50.

    This trend is thoroughly addressed in Sharp, “Addressing Economic Violence in Times of Transition,” in this volume; Schmid, “Liberia’s Truth Commission Report,” 8.

  51. 51.

    All are now codified in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court except for torture, which is an element of several crimes; all save crimes against humanity are the subject of distinct multilateral treaties and conventions as well. Miller emphasizes this as a result in part of legalism and of a political preference for civil and political rights to be addressed. Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 275–276.

  52. 52.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 316.

  53. 53.

    Laplante, “On the Indivisibility of Rights,” 149.

  54. 54.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 277.

  55. 55.

    Kenneth Roth, “Defending Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Practical Issues Faced by Organization,” Human Rights Quarterly 26 (2004): 63–73.

  56. 56.

    Sriram, Globalizing Justice for Mass Atrocities 61–77; Khulumani et al. v. Barclay Nat. Bank Ltd., 504 F3d 254 (2007). Phil Clark, Teddy Harrison, Briony Jones, and Lydiah Kemunto Bosire, “Justice for Apartheid Crimes: Corporations, States, and Human Rights,” (Oxford Transitional Justice Research, 2009).

  57. 57.

    This requires a longer digression into debates about textual interpretation in US jurisprudence than is appropriate for this chapter, but the limitations are enunciated in Sosa v Alvarez-Machain 542 US 692 (2004).

  58. 58.

    Leigh, Day & Co has litigated many of these cases—for more details see their website at http://www.leighday.co.uk/Our-team/partners-at-ld/Martyn-Day; Amnesty International, “Trafigura Guilty Verdict Upheld in Toxic Waste Dumping Case,” at www.amnesty.org (December 23, 2011).

  59. 59.

    Patrick Macklem and Ed Morgan, “Indigenous Rights in the Inter-American System: The Amicus Brief of the Assembly of First Nations in Awas Tingni v. Republic of Nicaragua,” Human Rights Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2000): 569-602; Oswaldo R. Ruiz-Chiriboga and Gina P. Donaldo, “Indigenous Peoples and the Inter-American Court: Merits and Reparations,” Comentario a la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos (forthcoming 2012), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2094289.

  60. 60.

    Clark et al., “Justice for Apartheid Crimes,” 14–15.

  61. 61.

    Reem Abou-El-Fadl, “Beyond Conventional Transitional Justice: Egypt’s 2011 Revolution and the Absence of Political Will,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 6 (2012): 1–13; Michaelle Browers, “How Mubarak’s Trial Brings Justice to Egypt,” Foreign Policy (August 17, 2011).

  62. 62.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 313–314.

  63. 63.

    Mahmood Mamdani, “Reconciliation without Justice,” Southern African Review of Books 46 (1996): 3–5.

  64. 64.

    Evelyne Schmid, “Liberia’s Truth Commission Report: Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Transitional Justice,” PRAXIS: The Fletcher Journal of Human Security XXIV (2009), 5–28.

  65. 65.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 321.

  66. 66.

    Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions and Beyond,” in this volume.

  67. 67.

    Lisa J. Laplante, “Transitional Justice and Peace Building: Diagnosing and Addressing the Socioeconomic Roots of Violence Through a Human Rights Framework,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2008): 331–355; Laplante, “On the Indivisibility of Rights,” 143–144.

  68. 68.

    See also the discussion of the Sierra Leone commission’s report in this volume by Dustin Sharp, “Economic Violence in the Practice of African Truth Commissions”.

  69. 69.

    Carranza, “Plunder and Pain,” 324–326.

  70. 70.

    Laplante, “Transitional Justice and Peace Building,” 337–338.

  71. 71.

    Naomi Roht-Arriaza,“Reparations and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,” in this volume.

  72. 72.

    Schmid, “Liberia’s Truth Commission Report,” 15.

  73. 73.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 279–280.

  74. 74.

    Miller, “The Effects of Invisibility,” 283–284.

  75. 75.

    LaPlante, “Transitional Justice and Peace Building,” 334.

  76. 76.

    Laplante, “On the Indivisibility of Rights.”

  77. 77.

    Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Victim-Centred Justice and DDR in Sierra Leone,” Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding on the Ground: Victims and Ex-Combatants, ed. Chandra Lekha Sriram, Jemima Garcia-Godos, Johanna Herman, and Olga Martin-Ortega (London: Routledge, 2012), 159–177.

  78. 78.

    Laplante, “On the Indivisibility of Rights,” 164; and Roht-Arriaza, in this volume.

  79. 79.

    Roger Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2 (2008): 292–309; Pablo de Greiff and Roger Duthie, eds., Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2009).

  80. 80.

    Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” 295.

  81. 81.

    This was because the funds were allocated differently, so a reduction of resources to one would not have resulted in an increase to the other. Chandra Lekha Sriram, Globalizing Justice for Mass Atrocities: A Revolution in Accountability (London: Routledge, 2005), 108–109; see also Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” 298.

  82. 82.

    Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” 299; Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Katharine Orlovsky, “A Complementary Relationship: Reparations and Development,” Transitional Justice and Development ed. de Greiff and Duthie, 170–213. See also Chandra Lekha Sriram, Olga Martin-Ortega and Johanna Herman, “Evaluating and comparing strategies of peacebuilding and transitional justice,” JaD-PbP Working Paper Series (2009), http://www.lu.se/upload/LUPDF/Samhallsvetenskap/Just_and_Durable_Peace/Workingpaper1_OnlinePDF.pdf.

  83. 83.

    Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” 301–302.

  84. 84.

    Roger Duthie, “Introduction,” in de Greiff and Duthie, eds., Transitional Justice and Development, 21.

  85. 85.

    Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” 307–308.

  86. 86.

    Pablo de Greiff, “Articulating the Links Between Transitional Justice and Development: Justice and Social Integration,” in de Greiff and Duthie, eds., Transitional Justice and Development, 40.

  87. 87.

    Marcus Lenzen, “Roads Less Traveled? Conceptual Pathways (And Stumbling Blocks) for Development and Transitional Justice,” Transitional Justice and Development, ed. de Greiff and Duthie, 80.

  88. 88.

    Waldorf, “Anticipating the Past.”

  89. 89.

    Ibid., 175.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., 176.

  91. 91.

    For analyses of the impact which also outline this trend, see Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies; Sikkink, The Justice Cascade; Olsen, Payne and Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance; Sriram, García-Godos, Herman, and Martin-Ortega, eds., Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding on the Ground.

  92. 92.

    Thoms, Ron, and Paris, “State-Level Effects of Transitional Justice,” and related articles in the special issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice edited by Colleen Duggan in 2010 entitled “Transitional Justice on Trial: Evaluating its Impact.”

  93. 93.

    Sriram, “Wrong-Sizing Transitional Justice”.

  94. 94.

    Waldorf, “Anticipating the Past,” 177–179.

  95. 95.

    Ibid., 179.

  96. 96.

    Dustin Sharp, “Interrogating the Peripheries: The Preoccupations of Fourth-Generation Transitional Justice,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 26 (2013): 149–178.

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Sriram, C.L. (2014). Liberal Peacebuilding and Transitional Justice: What Place for Socioeconomic Concerns?. In: Sharp, D. (eds) Justice and Economic Violence in Transition. Springer Series in Transitional Justice, vol 5. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8172-0_2

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