Contextualising the absence of standardised approaches to transitional justice in the Philippines

Abstract

The professionalisation, institutionalisation and standardisation of transitional justice has often been critiqued for pushing more informal, vernacular or experimental approaches off the radar. While this concern is legitimate and needs to be addressed, this article explores the continued relevance of standardised approaches, and of a shared language of transitional justice more specifically. I develop this argument against the background of recent events in the Philippines where, in May 2022, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the former dictator, won the presidential elections. In this article I show that there has been a multiplicity of context-sensitive, vernacular and experimental transitional justice initiatives to deal with intersecting and multilayered legacies of violence, but that what has been missing is an overarching framework as expressed through the discourse of transitional justice, and the potential to forge collaborations and coalitions on the basis thereof. The case of the Philippines hints at the potential of a more ecological understanding of transitional justice in which justice actors involved in standardised and vernacular, formal and informal, state and non-state, top-down and bottom-up approaches recognise each other and certain shared objectives through the shared language and normativity of transitional justice.