Measuring Up: A Dialogical Model for Assuring a Reparative Process

International law obliges governments to assure adequate and effective reparations for human rights violations. To date, most evaluations of such programs focus on outcomes while overlooking the process of how the state engaged victims, or not, in the determination of what they needed to feel repaired. A consensus now points toward the need to better involve beneficiaries in reparations programs in the process of determining these outcomes, yet there remains a need to better understand how to assure meaningful and effective participation. In response, the authors present an expansive view of the right to participation that would oblige governments to assure the quality of this participation in all stages of reparation programming, including design, implementation, and evaluation. They argue that reparative processes are, in themselves, forms of reparation, which go toward citizen restitution. They offer preliminary guidelines on how to assure reparative processes, as well as their evaluation, through a dialogical model that helps reorient the view of “victims” to being active agents in determining not only appropriate reparations but also larger transformations. Reparative processes shift the focus of evaluation to look beyond outcomes and toward the quality of the design and implementation processes, which, if flawed, may ultimately undermine the overall impact of any reparation program.