AHRC-NSF MOU: Alternative Accountabilities for Past Human Rights Abuses

Countries around the world have crafted innovative strategies to hold perpetrators accountable for past human rights violations. In fact, "transitional justice" mechanisms have become the major policy innovation of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century to reduce human rights violations and strengthen democracy. The practice of transitional justice has spawned a field of study of great interest to policy makers, scholars, and civil society. To date, however, systematic and cross-national studies in this field have focused on three main mechanisms—criminal trials, truth commissions, and amnesties—and their impact on human rights and democracy. Many other mechanisms, however, are widely used. Scholars, policy makers, and advocates interested in the full impact of transitional justice mechanisms, therefore, lack the research and analysis of the complete array of those mechanisms and their effects.
The proposed AHRC-NSF Collaborative Funding Opportunity between Leigh Payne (University of Oxford) and Kathryn Sikkink (University of Minnesota) aims to fill that void by generating an empirically-tested theory concerning the impact of a full range of transitional justice mechanisms. To this end, they intend to add to their existing transitional justice database currently uncharted "alternative accountabilities" (i.e., civil trials, lustration and vetting, reparations, and customary justice). Because alternative accountabilities are often adopted to deal with the massive atrocities of civil war and the resulting social divisions, the PIs will also examine their impact on peace, in addition to democracy and human rights outcomes analysed in their previous work. The project will provide the first database that will facilitate research on the latest scholarly and policy question: do alternative accountabilities substitute or complement other transitional justice mechanisms in the effort to strengthen human rights protections, democracy, and peace?
The collaborators' prior research qualifies them to undertake this project. In the last half-decade, the PIs individually built the two most complete databases on transitional justice. Subsequently, and with support from AHRC-NSF, they began constructing a new, large-N database of the three main transitional justice mechanisms to determine what aspects of trials, truth commissions, and amnesties contribute to, or impede, improvements in human rights and democracy. The PIs are releasing preliminary findings from this research in their current scholarly work, as well as in presentations in policy form. They have also created a fully accessible and searchable database (available online in September 2012).
This proposed project aims to extend this earlier research, and to address emerging criticisms concerning the appropriateness, desirability, and effectiveness of criminal justice. While the PIs have found that trials are central to improvements in democracy and human rights, they have not found that countries necessarily follow a single transitional justice pathway. This leads them to probe the particular roles alternative accountabilities play around the world in advancing or constraining human rights, democracy, and peace outcomes. A set of theoretical arguments propose when, why, and how these alternative accountabilities are likely to improve outcomes either in isolation or in combination with trials and amnesties. As yet, no systematic data or research exists to answer these questions. The PIs' prior analysis leads them to hypothesize that, despite hopeful claims now circulating among area specialists, alternative accountabilities are likely to have a more positive impact on the specific outcomes of human rights, democracy, and peace when combined with prosecutions. The project will thus allow the PIs to further test their own and others' approaches to transitional justice, thereby contributing to scholarly debate and also to producing better information on transitional justice mechanisms and outcomes to contribute to policy and advocacy in post-conflict and post-authoritarian situations.
The PIs have requested $307,129 from the NSF and £349,844 from the AHRC to conduct two years (September 1, 2012 to August 31, 2014) of research on, and analysis of, alternative accountabilities. The project's intellectual merit involves developing a new theory of when, how, and why these mechanisms contribute to human rights, democracy, and peace that the researchers will produce for scholarly publication. The project's broader impact includes: academic and professional development for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows; data sharing to further scholarly, policy, and advocacy research through the online access of a complete database on all transitional justice mechanisms in 120 countries from 1970 to the present; and the preparation and presentation of policy recommendations.