Talk "Historians and Transitional Justice: Promises and Pitfalls"
at the Democracy Institute, Central European University, Belgrade
13 December 2021
by Vladimir Petrovic
image courtesy of CEU
Working through the legacy of the authoritarian regimes became a global promise with the end of the Cold War. From South American military juntas to Eastern European communist nomenclaturas and war criminals of the Yugoslav wars and Rwanda, a number of measures were introduced to such an end, ranging from international and national trials and truth commissions, lustrations for perpetrators and reparations for their victims. Under the umbrella term transitional justice, such a toolkit was promising not only to punish past violations, but also to consolidate democratic order through stabilizing its institutions, fostering rule of law, promoting human rights, putting an end to impunity, and preventing future abuse of power. As we know only too well now, this path proved to be anything but straightforward. Powerful tensions arose between the concepts of justice, truth, peace, and reconciliation. They came to full prominence with global erosion of liberal democratic values and resurfacing of power politics. Against this global backlash, together we will examine its local dynamics, discussing specifically the roles historians did and did not, could have and still can play in this process of massive reexamination of the past.
https://events.ceu.edu/2021-12-13/historians-and-transitional-justice-promises-and-pitfalls