Transitional Justice and Civil Society

Transitional justice refers to the range of judicial and non-judicial measures societies adopt to address a legacy of large-scale past human rights abuses, typically during a transition away from authoritarian rule or armed conflict. It can include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programs for victims, institutional reforms such as the vetting of security forces, and various forms of memorialization. The field developed rapidly from the late 1980s onward, drawn from the experience of transitions from military dictatorship in Latin America, from communist rule in Eastern Europe, and from apartheid in South Africa, each of which faced the difficult question of how to reckon with a violent past without derailing a fragile new order.