After the Truth Commission: Gender and Citizenship in Timor-Leste

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) has completed its work, women’s citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women’s experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future.     

Truth Commissions and Procedural Fairness, Mark Freeman

In the last decade academic writing on transitional justicehas proliferated, but scholarly attempts to evaluate real worldresponses to dealing with the wrongs of the past and buildingpost-conflict societies are a more recent phenomenon. Of theworks that focus on experiences with truth commissions, MarkFreeman's book is perhaps the only sustained effort to examineself-consciously the question of the appropriate     

A Search for Truth: A Critical Analysis of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

In Liberia, much debate has surrounded the truth and reconciliation commission both in the challenges that it faced during its operational stage as well as in the issues surrounding the release and content of its report. This article will critically examine the establishment, proceedings, and findings of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in order to draw conclusions regarding what lessons can be learned, what could have been done to make the commission more effective, and how we can learn from this example in applying transitional justice mechanisms for future African conflicts.     

Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone

This paper concerns the frictions of engagement when transitionaljustice mechanisms are implemented in local contexts. My focusis the practice of truth-telling as part of a global paradigmof redemptive memory. I first trace the genealogy of this paradigm,examining how it came to appear ‘natural’ and ‘universal.’Second, I explore struggles over memory that ensued when SierraLeone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) assertivelypromoted this paradigm in a region in which alternative memorytechniques reflected popular priorities in an unstable contextof ‘no peace, no war.’ These struggles were rootednot only in the contested content of memories, but also in aperceived incommensurability between contrasting memory projectsbelieved to have divergent implications for processes of reconstruction.Finally, I examine the significance of reparations both forlocal practices of post-war memory and for the local effectivenessof the TRC.     

The HIH Royal Commission and the Tangled Web of Truth

There are high expectations that the HIH Royal Commission will uncover the truth about the collapse of the HIH insurance group and bring to justice the individuals and organistions culpable for the losses incurred. This article argues that this hope for veracity flies in the face of other royal commissions into financial issues in Australia which were but verisimilitude.     

Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisiónde la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR)) has been praisedfor challenging positivist approaches to truth by focusing onvictims and narrative interpretation. In this article, I arguethat such a focus is not as problem-free as widely assumed.In spite of its normative human rights base, the CVR underestimatedthe issue of historical and political recognition of particularactors during the Peruvian armed conflict – an issue thatbears practical and tangible consequences for the actors involved.I use the case of peasant self-defense groups and their treatmentregarding potential reparations benefits to explore the challengesinvolved in combining a human rights agenda with issues of historicalinterpretation.     

Reshaping Civil Society through a Truth Commission: Human Rights in Morocco's Process of Political Reform

¹Observers of Moroccan politics have debated extensively thesignificance of the country's ‘top-down’ liberalization.At this point, there is no definitive verdict on palace-guidedreforms, such as the recent Equity and Reconciliation Commission(IER). Rather, these reforms have left an ambiguous legacy.This article uses the IER – a truth commission establishedin 2004 to examine past human rights abuses, compensate victimsand ensure nonrepetition – as an analytical tool to understandhow transitional justice carried out as a strategic measureof top-down liberalization can reshape the relationship betweencivil society and the state. While the monarchy's reform effortsin Morocco have not (as of yet) led to a civil society capableof supporting a stable democratic transition, the article arguesthat these efforts have increased civil society's expectationsof gaining capacity and space to implement ethical goals anddemands. Greater expectations, in turn, have altered how themonarchy must calculate its survival strategy.     

Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law, Mark A. Drumbl

This timely book examines the practice and philosophy of punishmentfor atrocity crimes, both in international and domestic courts.It is a topic to which too little attention has been devoted,whether by the courts and tribunals that impose sentences foratrocity     

开拓创新 求真务实 诚信谐和——与时俱进的深圳精神

编者按：一个城市的精神是这个城市的灵魂，是市民群体的精神支柱和价值体现，是推动一个城市持续、快速、健康发展的内在动力。最近，由深圳市委宣传部、深圳市文明办联合深圳市主要新闻媒体开展的“深圳精神如何与时俱进”大讨论，犹如巨石激水，在深圳广大干部群众中引起了强烈反响。来信来稿或直抒胸臆，或建言献策，真知灼见，振聋发聩。大讨论在深圳干部群众中引起深刻反思——我们的精神状态与当前的新形势，与深圳二次创业是否相适应？大讨论也使许多干部群众警醒：不可小进则满，务必居安思危；只有改革创新，才能再铸辉煌。从本期起，本刊特陆续刊登有关这场大讨论的文章，希望读者予以关注。     

Morality,Law and the Place of Critique: Walter Benjamin's The Meaning of Time in the Moral World

Abstract

Critique as a philosophical concept needs to be recast once it is linked to the possibility of a productive opening. In such a context critique has an important affinity to destruction and forms of inauguration. Working through writings of Marx and Walter Benjamin, specifically Benjamin's "The Meaning of Time in the Moral World", destruction and inauguration are repositioned in terns of othering and the caesura of allowing.     

Truth,Effort, and the Legal Battle

In lawsuits, relative success depends upon two main factors:the true degree of fault, and the efforts invested on eachside. A proposed Litigation Success Function displays thisdependence while satisfying other essential properties. Undertwo different protocols, Nash-Cournot and Stackelberg,solutions are obtained for the litigation efforts,proportionate success, and values of the lawsuit on each side.Outcomes are evaluated in terms of two normative criteria; (i)achieving `justice' (interpreted as equality between Defendantfault and relative Plaintiff success) and (ii) minimizingaggregate litigation cost. Achievement of these aims isdetermined by the decisiveness of litigation effort relativeto true fault.