ABSTRACT Amidst the focus on traditional postconflict justice mechanisms, the significance of financial compensation warrants reevaluation. This research investigates the dearth of literature on reparations, seeking to unravel the circumstances that led to successful administrative reparation programs for intrastate human rights violations. Through an analysis of 32 historical cases across 20 countries, this study highlights political motivations and financial stability as key factors shaping reparations’ success, using Argentina and Nepal to illustrate how reparations can be implemented across different contexts. Recognizing that political calculations underpin the birth of nearly all implemented programs, a novel categorization system emerges, encompassing three overlapping motivators: legal obligation, protection of power and personal/political gain. Within this framework, understanding these motivators becomes imperative for the establishment of effective policies.

ABSTRACT∞ In the past decade, the paradigm of transitional justice has come under increasing scrutiny. Transitional justice scholarship has been characterized by self-reflective critiques, while on the ground even emblematic transitional justice cases have seen the (re)emergence of authoritarian tendencies, raising further questions about the paradigm’s legitimacy. Yet, in practice, a wide range of (grassroots) justice actors continue to invoke transitional justice as a mobilizing framework and action repertoire in an increasingly wide range of long and encompassing struggles for justice. These seemingly contradictory dynamics of crisis and expansion raise the question of how transitional justice lives on, both in a temporal and conceptual sense, years to decades after its initial deployment, and in the face of new socio-political and legal dynamics. This article builds on eight focus groups with 69 local justice actors from seven countries to present practitioner-informed insights about the many afterlives of transitional justice. Based on qualitative thematic analysis, we argue that these afterlives are shaped by plural, co-existing dynamics of continuity and ongoingness, unfolding through novel initiatives and processes across varying timelines, driven by the protagonism of victim-survivors, civil society and youth. This temporal stretching led practitioners to highlight the significance of intergenerational initiatives and impacts, to resituate the perceived legacies of early and standardized transitional justice interventions within protracted and evolving justice trajectories and to underscore the importance of the communicative functions and potential of transitional justice language and tools to bolster new and intersecting justice struggles.

ABSTRACT∞ Rising authoritarianism, far-right parties and violent political movements in the 21st century prompt scholars and practitioners to revisit two foundational assumptions in the transitional justice field, which was established in the 20th century amid the third wave of democratization. The first is that transitional justice is a consequence and a cause of democratic transition and consolidation. The second is that transitional justice has been a successful global project. Current political developments challenge us to take stock of the field and consider the implications for current and future scholarship and practice. In this introduction to the ‘Afterlives of Transitional Justice’ special issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (IJTJ), we first reflect on the many forms (‘lives’) that transitional justice has taken over the decades. The contributions address transitional justice’s life in three ways: as the transition to democracy, as the tools and processes themselves and as an academic and practice field. We then consider evolution and change in transitional justice (‘afterlives’). In increasingly perilous times for human rights, we hope that the insights gathered in these pages will help affected communities, activists, practitioners, policymakers and scholars look back in order to move forward and uphold the promise ‘Never again!’

ABSTRACT Education systems play an important role in social transformation and in promoting transitional justice initiatives. While most studies on transitional justice focus on the legal or political aspects of transition, fewer studies focus on social aspects, and particularly the role of education. We examine pedagogical approaches to transitional justice and how this concept enters school spaces. Through a mixed methods study with students, teachers and school staff in 12 secondary schools in Colombia, we examine how local actors engage with ideas about transitional justice. We propose the CPS (como [as a modality], para [for the purpose of], sobre [about]) framework, which seeks to understand the nuanced and complex relationship between education and transitional justice. We find that although students and educators may not always be familiar with the language around transitional justice, many of the actions, pedagogy and activities already ongoing are in line with transitional justice goals and values.

ABSTRACT∞ Transitional justice and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) converge and diverge in ways that make an exchange between them worthwhile. Despite their continuous academic development, they increasingly confront themselves with existential questions that retain their insular echo chambers. While they center the importance of addressing historical legacies of injustice to build more just futures, their approaches differ. They straddle the worlds of policy prescription (transitional justice) and scholarly praxis (TWAIL) in ways that confine them to their margins. Both fields’ circular introspection is fed through unrepresentative knowledge production and the absence of theories of justice and resistance that appeal to diverse political communities. This article argues that transitional justice should adopt TWAILian indeterminacy and that TWAIL could benefit from transitional justice’s more policy-oriented goals. Ultimately, it argues that rigorous scholarly exchanges between both fields present questions that begin to make cracks in their respective echo chambers.

ABSTRACT∞ In this article, I examine court-purging in democratic transitions through the lens of judicial preferences. Specifically, I address the debate on how court-purging during a democratic transition affects the likelihood of future court-purging. I argue that the prevailing assumption is one of static, sincere judicial preferences. In contrast, I explicitly recognize the role of dynamic judicial preferences and incentives. This recognition suggests that transitional court-purging could be minimal and cautious, while the broader judicial context may eventually achieve the same policy outcomes. The dynamic perspective is crucial for understanding past court-purging strategies and for informing the conceptual debate about the rule of law in transitional justice.

ABSTRACT∞ This article explores the potential for truth-telling and healing created by the recently announced National Resting Place for Indigenous Ancestral Remains in Australia. The return of Indigenous Ancestral Remains provides the opportunity to make redress for past wrongs, and to reflect on the attitudes which informed the dehumanizing practices of their past collection and display. Indigenous Ancestral Remains are critical to truth-telling in Australia as by their very existence and materiality they disrupt colonial narratives about terra nullius. However, human remains are also a powerful reminder of the limits of human rights processes. We consider the potential of the National Resting Place as a new Australian site of truth and memory to disrupt the traditional ‘museum’ model and to restore the dignity and respect owing to previously objectified human remains.

ABSTRACT∞ International reports by human rights organizations coincide that the government of Dina Boluarte in Peru has responded to social mobilization with disproportionate actions by public forces. Whereas recent scholarship explains the rising authoritarianism in the country to the weakness of political actors, this article provides a different interpretation by focusing on the political and economic legacies of the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). Post-Fujimori governments have been unable to complete a double transition: a transition to consolidate democracy and a transition to advance towards a postconflict society. Rather, they have empowered economic elites and have deepened stigmatization and repression of social mobilization. To understand current authoritarianism, it is important to identify where concrete power resides and how state practices respond to the influence and needs of powerful actors.