Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

This chapter outlines transitional justice as it has been institutionalized in international law, policy, and practice. As such it focuses on transitional justice as an elite discourse rather than as a grassroots project. The reason for this is the potential of elite discourses to constrain what is considered appropriate at the local level, and because it is the tension between international frameworks and local peacebuilding that is the subject of most of the critique of transitional justice from a peacebuilding perspective. The chapter provides an overview of the key transitional mechanisms and explores how each mechanism is intended to contribute to the goal of peace. The chapter considers the professionalization of transitional justice as a field and its embeddedness in normative ideas of justice. In addressing a peacebuilding audience the chapter seeks first to explain the arguments made in favor of legally normative transitional justice mechanisms, before exploring the difficult relationship between law and politics in transitional justice scholarship that contributes to the disciplinary gap that is so evident between transitional justice and peacebuilding.