Jasna Dragovic-Soso

Citizenship, East and West

The outcome of the political transition in Eastern Europe depends not only on the politics pursued but on the understanding of politics pursued but on the understanding of politics in the countries involved. This volume examines a key aspect of this understanding, the notion of ‘citizenship’ as it is being defined in Eastern Europe today. Formally, ‘citizenship’ refers to the criteria of membership in a political community. More broadly, it raises key questions of identity, contract and culture, which bear upon the future of such issues as human rights, mobility and the relations between state and civil society in the post-communist world. This interdisciplinary collection brings together sociologists, jurists and political theorists from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well as from Switzerland, France, Great Britain and the United States. The volume seeks to articulate and compare the meanings and implications of ‘citizenship’ in terms of key issues and in several national contexts. Common to all contributions is the conviction that a comparison among different understandings of citizenship illuminates national specifications and brings into focus some of the constraints on the emergence of a democratic consensus shared by East and West.

Apologising for Srebrenica: The Declaration of the Serbian Parliament, the European Union and the Politics of Compromise

In March 2010, the Serbian parliament adopted a declaration on Srebrenica as a formal apology for the 1995 genocide committed by the Bosnian Serb Army and paramilitary units of Serbias Ministry of Internal Affairs. The compromises necessary to pass the declaration – along with the opinions expressed in the parliamentary debate – show that this event was not a turning point in Serbias process of confronting the past, but a confirmation of the countrys deep ideological and political divisions. The declarations principal aim was to satisfy the European Unions expectations and bolster Serbias project of seeking EU membership. The EUs conditionality policy has thus been effective in achieving official gestures of atonement like the Srebrenica Declaration. However, the EUs approach also diverts from the long-term domestic process of value transformation and the building of a civic public culture to a narrow focus on short-term instrumental measures aimed foremost at satisfying external demands.

Peace versus justice? The dilemma of transitional justice in Africa

Africa has represented one of the principal laboratories of transitional justice since the 1990s. The continent has witnessed the creation of an international criminal tribunal (for Rwanda), several truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) (the best known being the South African TRC), a ‘hybrid’ court made up of domestic and international justice officials (the Special Court for Sierra Leone), and local conflict-resolution and reconciliation mechanisms derived from traditional practices (in Rwanda, Mozambique or Uganda). Finally, African countries also represent the totality of the cases currently before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. For these reasons, Peace versus justice? The dilemma of transitional justice in Africa is a welcome and necessary contribution. Not only does it consider the full range of mechanisms employed in Africa’s transitional justice processes, but it also provides a (self-) critical analysis by African scholars and practitioners who were personally involved in them. The volume is divided into five parts: the first providing a general overview of the challenges of transitional justice in the African context; the second focused on truth and reconciliation processes; the third on war-crimes tribunals; the fourth on indigenous justice; and the fifth on the International Criminal Court. Several themes cut across the various case studies considered. As the book’s title highlights, a key issue is the balance between ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ in the African context: the difficult decisions characterising post-conflict situations and the new governments’ attempts to address the legacy of human rights abuses, war crimes and genocide — but without jeopardising a fragile peace often ensuing from a negotiated settlement. A second cross-cutting theme is the importance of local ownership of transitional justice processes. This emerges particularly clearly in the chapters on Sierra Leone and Rwanda, where both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) in various ways disempowered local actors and societies who were meant to be the principal recipients of the justice these courts were providing. A third important theme concerns the ultimate aims of transitional justice, particularly the notion of ‘reconciliation’ through justice and truthtelling mechanisms. Here, local responses – like internationally driven ones – have been found to fall short of the lofty aims they declared as their ultimate justification: bringing about healing, forgiveness, ‘nation-building’ and social consensus about the past. The critiques provided in the volume raise the question of whether greater modesty in proclaiming the aims and more measured expectations of transitional justice are necessary, in Africa as elsewhere. As recognised by the editors, Peace versus justice? showcases the ‘large footprint’ of the South African TRC as a model for truth commissions in Africa