Engendering Transitional Justice: a Transformative Approach to Building Peace and Attaining Human Rights for Women

In this article, we examine the continuity of harms and traumas experienced by women before, during and after war and other mass violence. We focus on women because of the particular challenges they face in accessing justice due to patriarchal structures and ongoing discrimination in the political, economic and social, as well as legal spheres, and because of the gendered nature of the crimes and harms they experience. We use the four key pillars of transitional justice identified by the United Nations as a framework to analyse how these harms are addressed in the context of criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reform. We conclude that a gender-transformative approach to transitional justice that focuses on transforming psychosocial, socioeconomic and political power relations in society is needed in order to attain human rights for women and build a sustainable peace.     

Transitional Justice and Its Discontents: Socioeconomic Justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Limits of International Intervention

ABSTRACT

The incorporation of socioeconomic concerns into transitional justice has traditionally, as a result of prevailing liberal notions about dealing with the past, been both conceptually and practically difficult. This article demonstrates and accounts for these difficulties through the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country which has been characterized by a complex transition process and a far-reaching international intervention, encompassing transitional justice and peacebuilding as well as political and economic reforms. Examining the limits of international intervention in Bosnia and the marginalization of socioeconomic justice issues, the article analyses the events surrounding the protests that broke out in February 2014, and the ensuing international engagement with the protest movement. Faced with a broad-based civic movement calling for socioeconomic justice, the international community struggled to understand its claims as justice issues, framing them instead as problems to be tackled through reforms aimed at completing Bosnia’s transition towards a market economy. The operation of peacebuilding and transitional justice within the limits of neoliberal transformation is thus instrumental in explaining how and why socioeconomic justice issues become marginalized, as well as accounting for the expression of popular discontent where justice becomes an object of contestation and external intervention.     

„Outstanding universal value“. Die Arbeit an der Universalisierung des Wertvollen im UNESCO-Welterbe

The UNESCO World Heritage List is an international inventory of natural and cultural sites that are, according to the conception of its initiators and administrators, of importance for mankind as a whole. The evaluation of the list can be interpreted as a specific form of the social production of the valuable. Focusing on the cultural sites, the paper argues that the production of World Heritage renders a form of practical universalization of the value of particular goods. It centres on the questions of how a site is produced as culturally valuable, how its value is universalized, and what role is played by the concept of authenticity in the process. Two aspects of the evaluation practice are examined with regards to the production of universalization: working with and working on the assessment criteria. It is shown that universality and particularity are interwoven in this practice.