HR 326 Transitional Justice - Midterm & Essay Details

• HR 326 Transitional Justice occurs on Tuesdays from 7-9:50pm in room OD 200.

Evaluations

• Group Presentation and Discussion account for 20% of the grade.
• In-class midterm on February 11 accounts for 30% of the grade.
• Argumentative Essay due March 21 accounts for 30% of the grade.
• Take Home final Exam due April 14 accounts for 20% of the grade.

In-class Midterm Details

• It is written in class on MyLS on February 11. It is accessible from 7:00 pm to 9:50 pm Eastern Time.
• It covers course notes and textbook readings from weeks 1 to 4.
• There will be 50 questions.
• Ten sample questions will be posted on February 4 to provide insight into the midterm questions.
• It will cover dates, names, and general concepts from readings.

Argumentative Essay Details

• Only one paragraph
• Involve two arguments
• It should be at least 2200 words and no long than 2500
• Required addressing argument and respond to counterargument
• Include a controversial, specific, or either/or topic.
• Use a minimum of five scholarly journal or book sources.
• Ambiguous terms that can be interpreted in multiple ways lead to confusion or misunderstandings.
• Seek the most effective response or counter-argument for each point
• Record the number of pages from the source

Take Home Final Exam Details

• The final exam is due April 14, 2025, and available to students on March 26. It must be submitted to Dropbox on MyLS in WORD format.
• A title page containing the student name, student number, course number and title, and the professor's name must be included.
• There will be a late penalty of 2% per day (including Saturday and Sunday).

Transitional Justice (Week 1)

• It is a set of tools that people have created to help advance their goals
• It involves a study of choices made and the quality of justice rendered when states are replacing authoritarian regimes with democratic state institutions
• It is a response to gross violations of human rights
• It contributes to sustainable peace and the rebuilding of a society based on the rule of law
• Justice helps to restore and maintain people by establishing individual accountability, deterring future violations, establishing a historical record, promoting reconciliation and healing, providing victims with a means of redress, and removing perpetrators while supporting capacity-building and the rule of law
• The three classic pillars of transitional justice: criminal prosecutions (punishing and rebuilding), truth-seeking (establishing a new community with a shared sense of history to start fresh), and reparations (providing tangible assistance to victims)

Four "Waves" of Democratization

• 1818-1926: France, Britain, and the US saw three democracies emerge.
• 1943-1965: West Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, Korea, Colombia, and Venezuela were imposed from above
• 1974-1979: Portugal, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and Argentina experienced democracy because elites decided to become democratic.
• 1990: Former East Bloc Countries evolved into democratic countries and were also part of the EU

Typology of Transition

• Democratization by regime can be consensual
• Democratization against regime is non-consensual

Consolidation

• A political regime in which democracy has become "the only game in town."

Typology of Transitions

• Gradual transitions involve incremental democratisation and protracted revolutionary struggle in places like the UK, Sweden, and the United States (1783).
• Rapid transitions occur through transactions, as seen in Spain (1978), Chile (1989), and Korea (1988).
• Transitions through rapture involve coups or collapse, such as in Portugal (1974), Italy, Germany, and Japan (after WWII).
• A complete military victory occurred in Nicaragua (1979).
• Military humiliation of a military dictatorship happened in Greece (1974) and Argentina (1982).
• Electoral defeat of a dictatorship occurred in Chile (1988).
• The end of superpower support occurred in Guatemala
• The end of apartheid
• Reform of the political system happend in Morocco
• Peaceful or armed revolutions took place in Eastern Europe (starting in the 1990s) and Tunisia (starting in 2011).
• Tunisia achieved a formal democratic transformation post-Arab Spring.

Current Implications

• There are current implications whether the democratic journey in Tunisia will continue or regress.
• There is a historical context: Was Tunisia under Sharia law prior to its democratic changes?

Conflict Analysis

• Key considerations in understanding key actors and dynamics in conflicts.
• Focus is on identifying potential community harmony solutions.
• Recognize the significance of recognized government versus factional power through case studies.
• Example: factionalism and a lack of governmental stability stymied Libya's post-Gaddafi.

Transitional Justice Vs. Humanitarian Intervention

• Recognize failures in transitional justice (e.g., failures in Libya).
• Humanitarian intervention policies used to guide protective measures in conflicted states discussed.
• Establish stability without military force.

Transitional Justice

• Aims to provide protection to victims, build peace, and develop the state

Johan Galtung's Violence Framework

• Galtung is a Scholar in Peace Studies.
• Johan Galtung's model suggests that direct violence it is a symptom of deeper issues
• Any kind of observed violence can also be invisible
• Direct Violence: Observable acts of violence.
• Structural Violence: Systemic inequalities that perpetuate suffering.
• Cultural Violence: Societal norms that justify direct and structural violence.
• Structural violence is intentionally built, but is not unchangeable
• Use cultural violence and structural violence to assist solve direct violence
• Negative peace is to temporarily suppressing violence without addressing its origins.
• Positive peace is to foster conditions that prevent violence by tackling underlying issues.
• Need to shift from state security to human security to prioritize individual needs and rights.

Expanded Concept of Peace and Violence

• Direct violence is personal, such as in assault, riots, terrorism, or war.
• Indirect violence is structural, such as in poverty, hunger, discrimination, apartheid, or social injustice.
• Resistance would legitimize someone's violence.
• Revolutions begin with equality but ends with violence.

Contrasting State and Human Security

• State security focuses on preventing people from harming each other
• It protects political structures and territory, emphasizes survival of the state and its territorial sovereignty, and is rooted in "freedom from fear" (war, terrorism, and territorial security). It prioritizes state rights and territorial sovereignty.
• Human Security focuses on protecting human well-being, emphasizes the survival of people and their socio-economic development, and is based on "freedom from want" (basic human needs and people's security). It prioritizes the protection and promotion of human rights and dignity.

Aspects and Key Attributes of the State

• Sovereignity is the state's exclusive authority over its population and territory, which is independent of external authority.
• Legitimacy means the right to rule.
• Autonomy of the state can have relative independence of state authorities from the population.
• Nations do not describe an objective reality.

Imagined Communities

• Communities are imagined but seen as real
• Identities are constructed with lives of their own

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)

• According to Carl Schmitt, the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced can be reduced to friend versus enemy
• Political communities emerge when groups organize themselves by friends and enemies
• The friend-enemy distinction criterion is on which all other distinctions rest
• The degree of association and dissociation
• The "enemy" is the other/alien/stranger.
• Extreme conflict with "enemy" is a real possibility
• The "enemy" negates our existence and aims to destroy our way of life
• Killing becomes unnecessary and "enemy" is no longer a valid class when killing is no longer a valid viable option.

Issues

• Mimetic desire and scapegoating

Peace

• It is achieved through scapegoating. Scapegoating is blaming someone innocent for crimes.
• Scapegoating involved Hitler eliminating the Jews
• Desires are subjective, objective, and aim to keep up with others. Desires involve wanting what others have.

Scapegoating in Conflict

• It is an understanding of the phenomenon: blaming a group for societal problems to unify others against a common enemy
• Historical examples of scapegoating are evident in the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust.

Desires and Human Interaction

• The conflict between personal and others' desires can lead to violence.
• Subjective desires result in people acting against others for received and subjective benefits.
• The way peace is brough to a community is by scapegoating, which is unavoidable.

Week 2: Tools of Transitional Justice

• A relatively new concept is that states can and should deal with perpetrators of violent crime during civil conflict or repressive authoritarian rule
• A domestic and international dimension

Models of Security

• Considers state and human security

Justice

• There are three paradigms to explain and understand ways of approaching transitional justice: retributive, restorative, and reparative.
• Retributive justice involves indicting, trialing, and punishing perpetrators of crimes to acknowledge the crimes, punish/rehabilitate perpetrators, and educate the public (accountability).
• Retributive justice involves national courts
• Restorative justice is means to restore the victim and perpetrator back into the community with common history and values.

Traditional Justice Vs State Justice

-Traditional justice is invigored by the creation of ICC.

• Traditional justice is lauded because it is culturally relevant and it is justified in the regions where there is no international judicial.
• Support for traditional justice has been pragmatic.

Goals

• Reparative justice focuses on repairing suffering and loss by issuing an apology and awarding compensation or restitution to victims harmed during war or mass atrocity
• Agonistic pluralism holds conflict to be an inevitable fact of political life, and the term originated from agon which means conflict
• Agnostic pluralists believe conflict is a key element of political life
• This leads actors to assert their collective identities in a struggle for power and hegemony
• Achiving temporary conflictual consensus between adversaries ensures how society functions and how social change occurs through deliberative democracy and populism

Model of Politics

• "[Democratic politics] presupposes that the "other" is no longer seen as enemy to be destroyed, but as an "adversary", i.e., somebody with whose ideas we are going to struggle but whose right to defend those ideas we will not put into question.[..] An adversary is a legitimate enemy, an enemy with whom we have in common a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of democracy".[..]
• It transforms an "antagonism" into an "agonism."

Mediation

• Mediation involves an impartial outsider helping people affected by conflict or division to engage each other to effect positive change to their situation.
• It is not based on the use of force
• It is not aimed at helping one of the participants to win

Conflict Transformation

• Must actively envision, include, respect, and promote the human and cultural resources from within a given setting
• The long-term goal of transformation validates people and resources within. Not just fix the the problem
• The big picture of conflict transformation is as a inquiry

John Paul Ledarch

• There are no easy quick-fixes to deep-rooted conflict, no morally simplistic win-win outcomes and no purely technical solutions.
• Conflict Transformation is a long-term strategy that has to take place at all levels of society (not elite-pacts).
• The possibility to transcend violence “is forged by the capacity to generate, mobilize, and build the moral imagination.”

The Actors of Conflict Transformation

• These are actors such as state and inter-governmental organizations
• Development organizations
• Parties involved in the coonflict
• NGO's concerned with conflict and transformation

Key Dates in Northern Ireland History

• 1170: Settlers from Britain arrive in Ireland
• 1608: The Plantation of Ulster began, bringing English and Scottish settlers to the north.
• 1641: The Catholic-Gaelic responds to the Plantation and confiscation of land by Protestant settlers from England and Scotland.
• 1690: The Battle of the Boyne resulted in Protestant William III defeating Catholic James II.
• 1801: The Act of Union abolished the Irish Parliament, binding Ireland and Britain together.

Creation of Irish Free State/ Northern Ireland

In 1921, island of Ireland was partitioned by the UK. The 26 southern states gained independence while the 6 northeastern states remiained united.

• In terms of bloody Sunday in 1971/72 it was Interment and a Bloody Sunday

Northern Ireland Overview

• The population is about 1.8 million people
• 53.13% are Protestant descendant, 43.76% are Catholic
• From 1969-1994 there were around 3,400 dead and over 20,000 people injured as a result of war
• There were ceasefires since 1994 (on and off) and a Good Friday Agreement was made in 1998

Blame

• British state partition the area
• Irredentist nationalism
• James l's plantation happenrd in Ulster in 1600s
• British PM imposed the direct rule over the area

Good Friday Agreement, April 1998

• Five primary points of agreement
• Consent needed from the public's principle
• All of this happened to the individual and elite levels
• The goal of the union
• To allow both cultures to co-exist and govern together
• Conflict still persists
• David Cameron announced June 2016
• Brexit referendum set out to allow it’s citizen a chance to leave EU
• Majority voted out of EU

The Northern Ireland Protocol

• Protects checks along the land borders
• Keep the border open
• Avoiding camera and border posts

In Class midterm will cover

• Names and dates in slides
• General text information
• Multiple choice of 50
• Online test to be taken

Startegies Against the return of facscism

• Nuremberg Trials
• Tried 24 criminals
• Included
• Planning war
• Committing war crimes
• Committing other crimes against humanity
• Twelve were sentenced to death

Ad Hoc Tribunals

• Ad hoc trunials the former Yugoslovia and Rwanda were part of

Jurisdiction of the ICTY and Acheivements

• The tribunals authority is the prosecute and try
• Four different clusters

From Impunity To Accountability

• Personal responsibility, is the removal office.

The ICTY

• The reconciliations precess starts in the war thorn socirties

The ICC's Jurisdiction's :Primacy vs Complementary

• The court will have complete control
• The crimes are the committed by the state party

State Withdrawal From the ICC ICC

• First from March 2019
• The second from July 17th, 1998

Hybrid Courts

• There are 3 generations
• Tokyo
• Nuremburg
• ICTY
• ICTR
• East Timor
• Cambodia
• The ICC is applicable here the law is domestic and international
• Judges must try cases to prove defendants in international and domestic cases.

The Kosovo Problems

• The original mandate was for icty

Post Conflict

• This can also exist in traditional courts.

Modern courts

• The government often gets involved often violating a lot of modern justice systems
• Gacaca must be accepted

Truth commissions and Reconsilation

• State Interference in modern Gacaca Courts
• Allocate blame

Details for the HR 326 Transitional Justice course, including midterm and essay requirements. The midterm covers weeks 1-4 and consists of 50 questions. The argumentative essay requires two arguments, a counterargument response, and a word count between 2200-2500.