Justice in the Hague, Peace in the Former Yugoslavia? A Commentary on the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal

Akhavan, Payam

doi:10.1353/hrq.1998.0034

Cited by 156 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This question of how far investigating, prosecuting and punishing war crimes might frustrate efforts to obtain a peace settlement or make a return to violence more likely originated in 1994-95 as the United Nations began setting up the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia while the conflict in BosniaHerzegovina (BiH) was still ongoing (D'Amato 1994;Akhavan 1996Akhavan , 1998Anonymous 1996;Gaer 1997). Articles testing this proposition once the Dayton Peace Agreement for BiH had started to be implemented argued for the UN to prioritize 'peace over justice' (Bratt 1997), framed it as a question of 'peace versus justice?'…”

Section: Where Is Peace In Transitional Justice?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping the Nexus of Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

Baker¹,

Obradović-Wochnik²

2016

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the convergences and divergence between transitional justice and peacebuilding, by considering some of the recent developments in scholarship and practice. It examines the notion of 'peace' in transitional justice and the idea of 'justice' in peacebuilding. It highlights that transitional justice and peacebuilding often engage with similar or related ideas, though the scholarship in each field has developed largely in parallel to each other, and often without any significant engagement between the fields of inquiry. The article also notes that both fields share other commonalities, insofar as they often neglect questions of capital (political, social, economic) and at times, gender. It is suggested that trying to locate the nexus in the first place draws attention to where peace and justice have actually got to be produced in order for there not to be conflict and violence. This in turn demonstrates that locally, 'peace' and 'justice' do not always look like the 'peace' and 'justice' drawn up by international donors and peacebuilders; and, despite the 'turn to the local' in international relations, it is surprising just how many local and everyday dynamics are (dis)missed as sources of peace and justice, or potential avenues of addressing the past.

show abstract

Section: Where Is Peace In Transitional Justice?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping the Nexus of Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

Baker¹,

Obradović-Wochnik²

2016

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Gradually, however, the scope of transitional justice expanded. Criminal prosecutions came to be seen as a means to address more broadly defined ideas of political and social transformation (Akhavan 1998), and the debate centred around the opposition between peace and justice. This then moved on to a division between truth and justice, and the extent to which truth either represented or denied justice.…”

Section: The Performative Force Of Transitional Justice a The Emergementioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing Transitional Justice

Turner

2013

Law Critique

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. ABSTRACTTransitional justice as a field of inquiry is a relatively new one. Referring to the range of mechanisms used to assist the transition of a state or society from one form of (usually repressive) rule to a more democratic order, transitional justice has become the dominant language in which the move from war to peace is discussed in the early 21 st century.Applying a deconstructive analysis to the question of transitional justice, the paper seeks to interrogate the core assumptions that underlie transitional justice literature in relation to the relationship between law, politics and justice. As a discourse, transitional justice is replete with antinomies or binary oppositions, that of war and peace being the most obvious. Therefore the essentially decsontructible structure of differánce already exists within the concept. By examining the ways in which legal and political narratives are framed and reproduced, the paper seeks to deconstruct the opposition between law and politics on which much of the transitional justice literature rests. The article does not purport to provide a definitive critical analysis of transitional justice but aims to provoke debate and to prompt critical scholars to engage with the themes raised by providing an introductory analysis of some of the core features of a field of inquiry which seems ripe for deconstruction.

show abstract

“…But, scholarly opinion is divided. Payam Akhavan [1] argues that prosecution has a general deterrent effect, where over "a long-term process of social and political transformation" (p. 741) and through "moral propaganda", prosecution expresses social disapproval for certain actions. This, in turn, prompts a generalised internalisation that these actions are wrong; thus lawfulness becomes habitual (p. 746).…”

Section: Prosecuting Recruiters In the Special Court For Sierra Leonementioning

confidence: 99%

“…I know living in the city, I will get more than that. 1 That some young people have access to education while the majority do not speaks to inequality within Sierra Leonean society and, perhaps, demonstrates a rural-urban divide in terms of the distribution of opportunities. However, this example also suggests that wider access to public goods may provide other options to children than to join fighting forces voluntarily.…”

Section: Distributive Injustice and Young Peoplementioning

confidence: 99%

Child soldiers and distributive justice: addressing the limits of law?

Park

2010

Crime Law Soc Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper discusses the limitations of legal responses to the problem of child soldiery, beginning from the premise that the crime of using child soldiers is comprised of both the recruiter and the recruit. While legal approaches are addressed to the recruiter, because of the dearth of enforcement mechanisms, the protections established in international law have failed to prevent the recruitment of under-aged combatants. It remains to be seen how efficacious a deterrent the precedent-setting recent and on-going prosecutions of recruiters will be. Nonetheless, legal approaches do not address the recruit, and thus they fail to account for the complex of social reasons that prompt many children to join armed groups "voluntarily". This paper argues that the conditions that lead children to join armed groups are structural and, thus, must be addressed structurally through developing greater "distributive justice".

show abstract

Justice in the Hague, Peace in the Former Yugoslavia? A Commentary on the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal

Cited by 156 publications

References 10 publications

Mapping the Nexus of Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

Mapping the Nexus of Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

Deconstructing Transitional Justice

Child soldiers and distributive justice: addressing the limits of law?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About