Renee Jeffery

Political reconciliation in Timor Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville: the dark side of hybridity

ABSTRACT In recent years, the study and practice of political reconciliation has experienced a turn to hybridity. This turn has been defined by the increased rate at which liberal international and local peacebuilding practices, and their underlying ideas, have become merged, integrated or co-located in time and space. While hybrid approaches to reconciliation have been praised as an effective means of engaging local populations in peacebuilding operations, little attention has been paid to examining whether or not they also bring unintended negative consequences. Drawing on the cases of Timor Leste, Solomon Islands and Bougainville, this article examines the potentially dark side of hybridity. It demonstrates that, in each of these cases, hybrid approaches to political reconciliation have brought both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side of the equation, hybridity has seen imported international approaches to reconciliation adapted to meet local demands and ensure resonance with local populations. On the negative side, however, the misappropriation and instrumentalisation of local practices within hybrid approaches has served to damage their legitimacy and to jeopardise their contributions to reconciliation. The article thus concludes that the existence and extent of this dark side necessitates a re-evaluation of how hybrid approaches to political reconciliation are planned and implemented.

Enduring tensions: transitional justice in the Solomon Islands

Abstract From 1998 to 2003, the Solomon Islands found itself in the grip of ‘the Tensions’, a violent civil conflict that left some 200 people dead, more than 20,000 displaced, and countless others subjected to torture, rape, fear and intimidation. In the aftermath of the conflict, two dominant approaches to post-conflict justice emerged. The first, implemented by the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), favoured a ‘rule of law’ approach according to which large numbers of militants on both sides were arrested and processed through the criminal justice system resulting, in many cases, in the imposition of lengthy period of imprisonment. The second, ‘reconciliation’ approach, favoured local, grassroots, traditional and indigenous justice processes and were routinely implements by community groups, womens organisations and the churches. This article demonstrates that in the absence of a formally planned transitional justice process, these two approaches to post-conflict justice have come into serious tension with proponents of each accusing the other of hampering their justice efforts. It examines those tensions and analyses the extent to which the Solomon Islands’ Truth and Reconciliation Commission, designed in part to provide a bridge between the rule of law and reconciliation approaches, has been able to quell this new set of tensions.

Evaluating the ‘China threat’: power transition theory, the successor-state image and the dangers of historical analogies

The rise of China and its implications for stability in both the Asia-Pacific region and the world more generally continues to exercise the minds of scholars and policy makers alike. In particular, questions of the geostrategic importance of shifting power patterns marked, in particular, by Chinas elevation stand at the forefront of contemporary scholarship concerned with international and Asian security. The three works with which this article is primarily concerned all seek to address the challenges posed by a resurgent China.

Amnesties, Accountability, and Human Rights

For the last thirty years, documented human rights violations have been met with an unprecedented rise in demands for accountability. This trend challenges the use of amnesties which typically foreclose opportunities for criminal prosecutions that some argue are crucial to transitional justice. Recent developments have seen amnesties circumvented, overturned, and resisted by lawyers, states, and judiciaries committed to ending impunity for human rights violations. Yet, despite this global movement, the use of amnesties since the 1970s has not declined. Amnesties, Accountability, and Human Rights examines why and how amnesties persist in the face of mounting pressure to prosecute the perpetrators of human rights violations. Drawing on more than 700 amnesties instituted between 1970 and 2005, Renee Jeffery maps out significant trends in the use of amnesty and offers a historical account of how both the use and the perception of amnesty has changed. As mechanisms to facilitate transitions to democracy, to reconcile divided societies, or to end violent conflicts, amnesties have been adapted to suit the competing demands of contemporary postconflict politics and international accountability norms. Through the history of one evolving political instrument, Amnesties, Accountability, and Human Rights sheds light on the changing thought, practice, and goals of human rights discourse generally.

Hersch Lauterpacht, the Realist Challenge and the ‘Grotian Tradition’ in 20th-Century International Relations

This article argues that although he is ordinarily relegated to the realm of international legal scholarship, Hersch Lauterpacht made a significant contribution to the development of International Relations theory. In particular, it demonstrates that in attempting to address the range of debates surrounding the relationship between law and morality in the interwar and postwar eras, Lauterpacht not only engaged directly with E.H. Carr’s criticisms of ‘utopian’ thought but was responsible for providing the most comprehensive expression of the ‘Grotian tradition’ to date, a tradition that later appeared in the works of Martin Wight and subsequent scholars. In doing so, this article seeks to achieve not only Lauterpacht’s reincorporation into the history of International Relations scholarship but brings into question the disciplinary demarcations that divide the so-called ‘disciplines’ of International Relations and International Law.

The forgiveness dilemma: emotions and justice at the Khmer Rouge tribunal

In post-conflict politics, forgiveness is as controversial as it is popular. Generally conceived as the overcoming of negative moral emotions such as resentment and anger, forgiveness is, on the one hand, credited with bestowing significant psychological benefits on its practitioners, contributing to processes of interpersonal and societal reconciliation, and avoiding revenge. On the other hand, however, critics warn that rather than helping to address the negative emotions, forgiveness actually helps to provoke resentments and grievances by heaping injustice upon injustice. Herein lies the dilemma with which this article is concerned. By examining the nature of the negative emotions and their relationship to the pursuit of justice, as well as the nature and consequences of forgiveness, it considers the role that victim participation in human rights trials plays in helping post-conflict societies to overcome the forgiveness dilemma. To do so, it focuses on Case 001, heard before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Beyond Repair?: Collective and Moral Reparations at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Instituted to try serious crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge period, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has been heralded as an historic opportunity for the Court to develop international jurisprudence on reparations and to provide a workable model for how best to address victims’ rights in international criminal trials. At the end of Case 001, however, the Court seems to have fallen well short of those expectations. This article examines how and why the ECCC failed to live up to the high expectations that accompanied its institution. It argues that political pressure, financial constraints, and the absence of a clear understanding of what “collective and moral reparations” entail have all contributed to the Courts failure to realize its original intention to advance the international reparations agenda.

Trading amnesty for impunity in Timor-Leste

Abstract In 1999, the United Nations made a strong stand against impunity for human rights crimes by prohibiting the inclusion of blanket amnesties in peace agreements. This article examines the impact of the UN’s anti-amnesty policy on one of the first states to be affected by it, Timor-Leste. It argues that even in the absence of an amnesty, more than 15 years after independence impunity still reigns in Timor-Leste, due a lack of judicial capacity, political interference, the persistent belief that amnesties facilitate reconciliation, and an unwillingness on the part of the international community to adequately fund the justice process. That is, this article argues that the UN has oversold its position on amnesties, and that although its anti-amnesty policy is taking hold, in the case of Timor-Leste at least, justice seems as elusive as ever.

When is an apology not an apology? Contrition chic and Japan's (un)apologetic politics

More than ten years ago, Walter Shapiro (1997) declared that the age of ‘contrition chic’ was upon us, as public figures from celebrities and beauty pageant winners to adulterous presidents increasingly came to embrace public apologies as the means of limiting damage caused by their transgressions. As reflected in the proliferation of newspaper articles bearing the sceptical title of ‘Whose sorry now?’ (Nobles 2008: 4), even the decidedly unfashionable world of international politics joined the trend, with expressions of contrition tendered for a wide range of injustices including atrocities associated with World War II; the colonial activities of Britain, Belgium, Germany and Japan; the Holocaust; American interference in the affairs of Central American states; and the failure of the international community to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. In the past decade, this trend has proven to be more than a passing fad. In recent years, demand for apologies has not abated but rather expanded to include those rendered by private corporations alongside states, organisations and institutions, such as the Catholic Church, in international affairs. Accompanying what Teitel describes as an accelerating demand for political apologies (2006: 101) has been a renewed focus on Japan and the perennial issue of its perceived failure to apologise, or apologise adequately, for its actions

To Forgive the Unforgivable

September 20, 2005, marked the death of Simon Wiesenthal (b.1908). An internationally renowned Holocaust survivor, the so-called “Nazi hunter” is most famous for founding the Jewish Historical Documentation Center through the auspices of which he brought more than eleven hundred Nazi war criminals, the most famous of which was Adolph Eichmann, to trial for their actions during the Holocaust. As world leaders and Holocaust survivors gathered in Israel for Wiesenthal’s memorial service, all heralding his great achievements and regaling the numerous honors bestowed upon him during his lifetime,2 a survivor of Joseph Mengele’s notorious “twin studies” released a surprising statement. In it, Eva Mozes Kor called for an end to the sort of vengeance that was, in her view, disguised as justice in the pursuance and prosecution of war criminals, and called for victims of the Holocaust to forgive their tormentors. This was despite the fact that Wiesenthal made it clear on several occasions that he was not “motivated by a sense of revenge” but by a desire to see justice served.3 Kor was ten years old when she and her sister Miriam first came into contact