Christine Bell

Justice Discourses in Transition

This article asserts that ‘transitional justice’ analyses provide important tools in understanding how societies emerge from violent politics. It argues for a conception of transitional justice that goes beyond the question of dealing with the legacy of past human rights violations; rather, its focus is on a range of inter-related dilemmas relating to the role of law in transitional societies. Specifically, the article explores the pivotal and paradoxical role played by law and legal process in times of transition. It examines the tensions inherent in simultaneously reforming the law while utilizing legal form to bring about institutional transformation. These broad theoretical issues are addressed using Northern Ireland as a case study. The role of law is examined (and a reassessment of transition offered), through an exploration of five inter-linked areas: The relationship between law and conflict; the transformation of legal institutions; dealing with the past; political accommodation and minority rights; and the gap which occurs around gender and political transition. The article concludes by suggesting that only through a broader understanding of transitional justice, coupled with a nuanced reassertion of law’s domestic and international legitimacy, can the role of law in transitional societies be adequately understood.

PEACE AGREEMENTS OR PIECES OF PAPER? THE IMPACT OF UNSC RESOLUTION 1325 ON PEACE PROCESSES AND THEIR AGREEMENTS

On the 31 October 2000 UNSC Resolution 1325 was adopted. The resolution provided for a range of measures aimed at the inclusion of women in the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. In particular, several of the resolutions provisions addressed the role of women and gender in peace negotiations and agreements. This article examines whether and how Resolution 1325 has impacted on the drafting of peace agreements. We analyse explicit references to women and gender in peace agreements from 1990 to 2010, providing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the extent to which women and gender are addressed. We conclude by using our findings and analysis to address the relationship of feminist intervention to international law, and debates around the strategies and trade-offs which underlie feminist promotion and use of UN Security Council Resolutions in particular.

Peace Agreements: Their Nature and Legal Status

The last fifteen years have seen a proliferation of peace agreements. Some 50 percent of civil wars have terminated in peace agreements since 1990, more than in the previous two centuries combined, when only one in five resulted in negotiated settlement. Numerically, these settlements amount to over three hundred peace agreements in some forty jurisdictions. International standards have even begun to regulate peace agreements. United Nations guidelines, guidelines and recommendations of the secretary-general, and Security Council resolutions have all normatively addressed peace agreements: both the processes by which they are negotiated and their substance, particularly with relation to accountability for past human rights abuses.

The People's Peace? Peace Agreements, Civil Society, and Participatory Democracy

This article, drawing on an extensive collection of peace agreements dating from 1990 until the present day, analyzes peace agreement provisions for civil society involvement and considers the extent to which peace agreements proffer new models of participatory democracy. We begin with some background and a short overview of political theory on participatory democracy, identifying key dilemmas. The body of the article sets out a comprehensive analysis of peace agreement provisions for civil society, indicating how peace agreements negotiate the dilemmas identified in theory. We then evaluate this negotiation in the context of post-agreement implementation difficulties. In conclusion, we discuss the implications for future research.

Transitional Justice: (Re)Conceptualising the Field

Transitional justice discourse is generally accepted as having its foundations located in the theoretical, policy and practical implications of dealing with past human rights violations in societies that have experienced either repressive politics or violent conflict. Many theorists and policy-makers resolutely assume or defend the notion that ‘dealing with the past’ is where the debates about, and contribution of, the transitional justice paradigm uniquely lie. 2 Understood in this way, transitional justice as a field of study has grown exponentially, comprising theoretical debates, the comparative assessment of domestic accountability schemes, international criminal justice, the study of truth commissions, and ethical-legal debate concerning the morality of compromise on accountability for gross and systematic violations of human rights. This foreword, building on the previous work of its authors, 3 extends and expands our contention that transitional justice in this narrow sense must be located in a broader and more problematised understanding of justice in contemporary transitions. We also use the opportunity provided by this symposium to highlight an expansion of conceptual horizons being carried out at the Transitional Justice Institute (University of Ulster), and the innovative approach to the transitional justice field being advanced by a group of diverse inter-disciplinary scholars. The approach advocates both drawing on other disciplines, and firmly supporting parallel disciplinary fields to work alongside a legal research agenda; affirming the importance of rigorous cross-jurisdictional comparisons; and utilising empirical and socio-legal methodology to advance legal inquiry.

Power-sharing and Human Rights Law

This article maps international human rights jurisprudence relating to the compatibility of power-sharing arrangements with human rights law. This mapping reveals a growing jurisprudence but one that appears piecemeal and internally inconsistent. The article suggests that human rights jurisprudence on power-sharing has varied over time, but also, by region, by group addressed, and according to the perceived purpose of the power-sharing mechanism. The article argues that the contingencies of human rights adjudication reflect underlying assessments of the legitimacy of the polity that are seldom explicitly articulated by human rights bodies. The relationship of adjudication to legitimacy poses a central paradox for any attempt to articulate a more coherent normative approach: normative coherence appears to require human rights bodies to develop their understanding of the relationship of rights to governmental legitimacy, but such development appears beyond the reach of human rights bodies due to structural limits of international human rights law and its adjudicatory apparatus. This paradox drives the inconsistencies of how human rights bodies engage with power-sharing and constitutes the real barrier to coherent normative development.

Lex pacificatoria Colombiana: Colombia’s peace accord in comparative perspective

In this short piece, I open a conversation over how the Colombian Final Peace Accord provides evidence of, and a contribution to, a more general lex pacificatoria or “law of the peacemakers” (lex pax for short). In light of the Accord’s recent ballot defeat, I integrate into this assessment the merits of using a referendum to approve (in Colombia’s case “affirm or deny”) the Agreement as a whole. Throughout, I draw on a peace agreement database which has coded over one thousand four hundred peace agreements since 1990 for comparative insight.

‘Liberal Multiculturalism’ and the Limits of International Law

Kymlicka’s book tells a story of international law. It tells of how international legal developments in the area of minority rights and indigenous peoples and racial minorities constitute a process of ‘global diffusion of the political discourse of multiculturalism’ embedded in legal and quasi-legal norms (pp. 3–4, his emphasis). Kymlicka’s main conclusions are directed at the future of international law. He suggests that an attempt at targeting specialist norms to the distinct needs of different minority groups – indigenous peoples, national minorities and other minorities – has been retreated from in a move back to generalized norms that do little to promote liberal multiculturalism. He tentatively argues for a revision of international law towards a more systematic attempt to target norms. In the spirit of engagement, this response questions Kymlicka’s understanding of international law’s means of production and therefore his evaluation of its potential role in underwriting liberal multiculturalism. To do this, I briefly tell a different story of where the international norms he refers to came from, and of what their limits are.

Power-Sharing, Conflict Resolution, and Women: A Global Reappraisal

Peace processes in intrastate conflict have, since 1990, overwhelmingly institutionalized compromises between contenders for power in the form of power-sharing arrangements. This article focuses on political power-sharing, drawing qualitatively on a global data-set of peace agreements (PA-X, Peace Agreement Database). It argues that peace agreements indicate three main functions for political power-sharing: permanent group accommodation, equitable representation of minorities in autonomy regimes, and transition management. Each of these power-sharing types raises different opportunities and challenges for womens inclusion and equality. The analysis aims to inform womens engagement with power-sharing design and implementation in fragile and conflict-affected states. It also introduces the importance of function into the power-sharing literature, which is mostly concerned with form, while illustrating the value of global data on peace agreements to “midlevel analysis” capable of bridging between broad quantitative generalizations and detailed case study analysis.

Transitional Justice and Political Settlements

This draft article examines the role of transitional justice in societies emerging from conflict. Fundamentally, it addresses the ways in which the context of conflict resolution shapes the transitional justice mechanisms which emerge and constrains their implementation. The paper argues that transitional justice measures need to be understood as having a critical political settlement dimension, and as closely intertwined with the bargaining processes of political elites. These processes are important to non-repetition of human rights violations. The paper sets out the factors which influence design of transitional justice mechanisms, and in conclusion it suggests strategies for improving international intervention in the area.