“Disconnecting the Past from the Future? The Rise of Resilience Thinking and the Marginalization of Transitional Justice”

November 8, 2019 at 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM - D492 Loeb

Speaker: Philipp Kastner, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Western Australia
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract: Contemporary transitional justice initiatives, which are typically part of a liberal peacebuilding strategy promoted by international actors, often seem distant, ineffective or even counter-productive. While justice institutions and international donors still rely on prescriptive universal norms – seen as underpinning the exceptionality of transitional justice – there is a perceptible trend to turn to the “local” and to empower the communities most immediately affected.

Transitional justice discourses and scholarship have remained relatively indifferent to the concept of resilience. However, this concept appears useful to analyse this discursive turn to the local and, more generally, to explore the rationale, objectives and shortcomings of justice initiatives in conflict or post-conflict situations. Through a critical approach to resilience, and embedded within a legal-pluralist framework, this presentation will analyse some of the current dynamics and trends in the field of transitional justice. It will examine the ways in which past and present forms of political violence are dealt with, in particular in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has been a test case for various experiments: the International Criminal Court has been involved; a hybrid tribunal has been established; the ordinary court system attempts to bring perpetrators to justice; and different traditional, or tradition-based, processes play an important role.

Bio: Philipp Kastner is a Senior Lecturer at the Law School of the University of Western Australia. He holds degrees from McGill University, Canada (D.C.L. and LL.M.) and the University of Innsbruck, Austria (Dr. iur. and Mag. iur). He researches and teaches in the areas of international criminal law, the resolution of armed conflicts, transitional justice, public international law and legal pluralism. Publications include Legal Normativity in the Resolution of Internal Armed Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and International Criminal Justice in bello? (Martinus Nijhoff, 2012). He is also the editor of International Criminal Law in Context (Routledge, 2018).