Simon Robins

Transitional justice as an elite discourse: Human rights practice between the global and the local in post-conflict Nepal

Nepals Maoist insurgency emerged out of a highly unequal society in which indigenous, lower castes, and women were subject to systematic social, political, and economic exclusion. This study seeks to understand how post-conflict agendas to address Nepals violent past emerge, and it compares the agendas articulated by indigenous victims of the conflict from a remote rural district with the agenda of civil society, which is dominated by Kathmandu-based elites and uses the language of “transitional justice.” An empirical study has been made of the needs of transition of families of those disappeared during the conflict in the midwestern district of Bardiya, the worst affected by disappearances during the insurgency. The agenda of families that surfaces from this study is then compared and contrasted with that articulated by those leading advocacy for transitional justice in Nepal, namely, national and international human rights agencies. Indigenous rural victims remain ignorant of rights and articulate an agenda of addressing basic needs and demanding political change that empowers them. Elite-led civil society, notably human rights agencies, has adopted a legalistic agenda that coincides with the dominant global rights discourse in which prosecutorial process is prioritized and the inequalities that led to conflict are considered to be beyond the remit of transitional justice; issues of social and economic rights are ignored. Victims remain marginalized from both the transitional process and from those agencies that purport to represent them. The author argues that a global rights agenda that uses the language of giving agency to the marginalized actually serves to maintain a status quo that guarantees the position of ethnic and caste-based elites.

An Empirical Approach to Post-conflict Legitimacy: Victims' Needs and the Everyday

Abstract An empirical study has been made of victims of conflict in Timor-Leste and Nepal seeking a qualitative understanding of local post-conflict priorities. It allows an appreciation to emerge of how the conflict-affected conceive of legitimacy and quality of governance, with victims emphasizing basic needs, an addressing of issues of marginalization and the incorporation of indigenous understandings of the meaning of peace. The data in this study motivate a victim-centred discussion of both the limitations of liberal approaches to peace and the implications for the legitimacy of post-conflict governance of prioritizing the everyday needs of the conflict-affected, in contrast to universal and institutionally rooted liberal values.

Rethinking civil society and transitional justice: lessons from social movements and ‘new’ civil society

ABSTRACT Transitional justice has often reduced conceptions of civil society to human rights NGOs, and lacks a rigorous conceptualisation of the role that civil society plays in transitional justice processes. It largely ignores as political actors the social movements that have driven democratisation in various parts of the world and can be credited as integral to the creation of the discourse of transitional justice. While transitional justice in theory and practice remains focused on traditional civil society, institutions and the state, recent transitions highlight that change is driven by a range of different actors, often using modes of organisation and repertoires of action linked to social movement modalities and other forms of collective action. As such we coin the term ‘new’ civil society, associated with events such as the Arab Spring and austerity-led protests in Southern Europe, to argue that it provides new models for understanding change and justice in transition. An effort is made to conceptualise the roles civil society can play in shaping transitional justice and the ‘new’ civil society framework is used to understand how such actors actively contest mainstream social, political and transitional paradigms, and model alternatives to them. ‘New’ civil society actors rethink how justice and rights are understood in transition, and model alternatives that constitute new forms of transitional politics.

Contested spaces of transitional justice: legal empowerment in global post-conflict contexts revisited

This article critically examines the concept of legal empowerment as it has been used with reference to transitional justice, mapping its rise and impact based on a selection of case studies. In recent decades, international transitional justice advocacy has evolved dramatically, with practice increasingly emphasising the centrality of criminal accountability for violence, precisely as more holistic approaches have emerged that have broadened the remit of transitional justice. Post-conflict justice advocates have thus become professionalised transitional justice entrepreneurs working on issues such as democratic transitions, rule of law and human rights. A legal empowerment discourse has emerged in a number of scholarly debates that discuss legalistic and normative issues related to the implementation of retributive and restorative justice mechanisms. In theory, the concept of legal empowerment addresses the issue of social exclusion in transitions, increasing the rights of the marginalised. In practice, however, legal empowerment has disappointed and raises several issues around its performance that are scrutinised in this article. Drawing on case studies in Nepal, Tunisia and Bosnia-Herzegovina the authors analyse issues related to agency, institutions and structure, and argue for a needs-centred, participatory approach in place of the rights-based legal empowerment concept.