Reforms Carried out by State Institutions through Transitional Justice – Tools for Mass Atrocity Prevention Tibi Galis, PhD AIPR

 Connecting the concepts of transitional justice and mass atrocity prevention from a policy perspective  Coming up with creative projects related to transitional justice policies that integrate a mass atrocity prevention goal, among others

 transitional times are, by nature, fertile periods for the emergence of new ideas about how a new regime should work and for the competition between these new ideas and old ones  transition is a process through which individuals and societal actors reinvent their place in society after a negotiated decision to move away from an old order or after the gradual disintegration of such an order

 transitional justice is an essential exercise in symbolic politics that are developed to alter a political society's understanding of itself  ‘institutionalization’ through post-Communist transitional justice mechanisms of the idea that Communism was a system that was experienced by citizens as a ‘living lie’ in its last phases  essential tension that marks transitional justice’s approach to dealing with the past and the present: the tension between transitional justice exposing, remembering and understanding political violence and transitional justice as a tool for establishing stability and legitimizing transitional compromises

 framing of transitional justice also highlights why there is tension between two commitments taken publicly by the elites in times of transition – one the commitment to signal a break with the politics of the past that led to violence and second the commitment to engage in structural reforms seeking to resolve and defuse the social, political and economic realities that ignited the initial conflict  My focus: how transitional justice explores the depths of delegitimizing the previous regime and conversely legitimizes the new one.

 transitional justice, while operating in an environment of transitional constraint, is a policy complex immensely rich in opportunities.  transitional justice's symbolic nature provides avenues for rule setting, a much needed function in transitional societies.  the transitional justice narrative of correcting the abuses of the past and laying the foundations of a fair society, different from the past, opens numerous opportunities for dealing with perceived consolidational threats.

 Regime consolidation – the process of developing a functioning, well defined political regime that makes possible a desired social and political plan  Threat infrastructure  Perceived consolidational threats  ultimate consolidational threat – mass atrocities  personal constraints (personalities, personal histories), political elite constraints, leadership constraints etc; prioritization issues e.g. Argentinean judiciary policy and the military, South African TRC process and economic/structural crimes  Transitional justice policies – “corrected”/redefined as they develop

 Argentina – civilian leadership of the military  Hungary – compensation through privatization  Germany – domestic Holocaust trials  Bolivia – indigenous autonomies  Netherlands – slavery monuments  Numerous states – truth commissions morphing into secretariats of human rights/ ombudsperson institutions  US – apology for Japanese American internment  UN – reports on Rwanda or Sri Lanka failures  Argentina – NGOs and trials – importance of strategies  Argentina – Bank of Buenos Aires  Localized events, institutional policies  Essential ingredient: policy creativity

 Step 1 - Individual step:  Please identify within your own society one element of the consolidational threat infrastructure that you perceive to be important for domestic mass atrocity prevention (risk can be very low and very early in the process).  Identify a past abuse that you think can be related to that present threat.  Develop a transitional justice strategy that is consistent with the role of the institution where you work and that can be implemented by your institution and its governmental/non-governmental partners. Have a clear image of how this transitional justice process will affect the mass atrocity risk factor.  Please be creative!  Example - Paraguay

 Step 2 – 2 person step  Explain your group partner your strategy and its aim and listen to your partner explaining her/his strategy and its aim.  Jointly pick the transitional justice policy that seems most promising to both of you. You must pick one of the two policy proposals before the next step.  Now you are one group promoting the chosen policy.  You can make changes within the proposed policy before the next step, based on the interactions within the group.

 Step 3 – 4 person step  Explain to the other group your strategy and its aim and listen to the other group explaining their proposed policy and its aim.  Jointly pick the transitional justice policy that seems most promising to the two groups. You must pick one of the two policy proposals before the next step.  Now you are one group promoting the chosen policy.  You can make changes within the proposed policy before the next step, based on the interactions within the group.

 Step 4 – 8 person step  Explain to the other group your strategy and its aim and listen to the other group explaining their proposed policy and its aim.  Jointly pick the transitional justice policy that seems most promising to the two groups. You must pick one of the two policy proposals before the next step.  Now you are one group promoting the chosen policy.  You can make changes within the proposed policy before the next step, based on the interactions within the group.

 Step 5 – Plenary  Presentation of the three chosen policies to all your seminar colleagues.

 “Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention” – Eds: Sheri Rosenberg, Tibi Galis, Alex Zucker, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

  Thank you!