Stirring the Justice Imagination: Countering the Invisibilization and Erasure of Syrian Victims’ Justice Narratives

Abstract

With most avenues to pursue justice for Syrian victims of international crimes blocked, Syrian and international justice actors within civil society and formal institutions are active in exploring ways to seek some form of justice and accountability. In doing so, many of them use the language of transitional justice as the most promising paradigm to keep justice on the international agenda and to resist the prevailing defeatism about the possibility to advance justice in the absence of a transition, as well as to remedy the marginalization of victims’ experiences and narratives. Many of these actors are not only interested in criminal accountability. They also seek to stretch the boundaries of what is imaginable in terms of justice, beyond existing mechanisms and even beyond the judicial realm. They are striving to open up the justice imagination. In a maximalist sense, they are foraging for more ambitious justice narratives that can accommodate the victims’ lived experiences. In a minimalist sense, they are resisting the erasure or invisibilization of the experiences of millions of Syrians affected by hackneyed justice narratives. This article refers to the work of these justice actors to expose and conceptualize some of the shortcomings of mainstream transitional justice discourses.

A Tapestry of Edgelands: Defining Carceral Edgeland(s) in Masafer Yatta (Firing Zone 918)

“…While this article is primarily concerned with the edgelands, the language that frames the military activities in Masafer Yatta is notable. In their study of the narratives of Syrian victims of state violence in the transitional justice process, Brigitte Herremans and Tine Destrooper connect the processes of erasure and invisibilization to practices of power and marginalization (2021), noting that “[o]missions are not casual occurrences; in many cases they reflect existing power dynamics” (p. 580). The discursive omission of the Palestinian residents renders not only the population invisible, but also the violence that unfolds in a zone that is semi‐concealed from public scrutiny.…”

Moving Beyond Formal Truth Practices and Forensic Truth in the Syrian Conflict: How Informal Truth Practices Contribute to Thicker Understandings of Truth

“…The logic of forensic truth is linear and straightforward: as consequence of revealing these facts, the 'disinformation about the past that had been accepted as truth by some members of society [loses] much of its credibility' (SATRC, 1998, 112). The promises of stability and predictability projected by this notion of forensic truth means that it easily fits the logic of standardized transitional justice, which is premised on linear cause-effect assumptions and privileges certain kinds of actors (such as institutional stakeholders) as knowers, invisibilizing others as a result (McAuliffe, 2017;Herremans and Destrooper, 2021). This means that a narrow understanding of the relationship between truth and justice, exclusively rooted in forensic truth, is potentially problematic.…”

“…Syria is not a textbook case of transitional justice. It is part of a recent trend whereby transitional justice is increasingly used in cases where there has not been a formal political transition (Herremans and Destrooper, 2021). Despite the absence of a ‘transitional moment’, the discourse and normativity of transitional justice are regularly called upon in these cases because justice actors appropriate and promote transitional justice as toolkit that is sufficiently comprehensive and versatile to initiate a range of justice processes.…”

“…The way in which Syrian and international justice actors continue to apply the transitional justice paradigm demonstrates its disruptive and innovative potential in ongoing conflict. While initially referenced for pragmatic reasons – i.e., the lack of formal avenues such as the ICC – this engagement with transitional justice can also be read as a successful attempt to advance possibilities within and beyond formal justice avenues, thus ‘opening up the justice imagination’ (Herremans and Destrooper, 2021). Particularly striking is how Syrian justice actors adopted an ecosystemic approach (Evrard et al, 2021), in which victim participation in transitional justice processes is not delimited by particular formats, spaces or moments.…”

Artistic Practices as a Site of Human Rights: How Performative Ethnography Can Facilitate a Deeper Contextual Understanding

“…This is the case of many refugees from Syria living in Shatila who, for much of their lives, faced a restrictive discursive environment in which the regime established guidelines for public speech and used the threat of violence to force its citizen into silence (Wedeen 1999: 20). This longstanding experience of imposed and oppressive silencing challenges the effectiveness of engagement that assumes that people will easily talk about their experiences of injustice, their justice aspirations or their selfidentification as rights-bearers (Herremans and Destrooper 2021). In our case, we noticed that approaching research participants based on their skilled practice and making this the centrepiece of our intervention, allowed for a more equal negotiating position, counteracted some forms of privilege of the researcher and started from a common interest-rather than from our interest in rights talk.…”