Innovative Uses of Transitional Justice in Ongoing Conflict and for Corporate Complicity

The proposed project responds to a request from practitioners and policy makers to use the AHRC-funded Transitional Justice Research Collaborative (TJRC) to design more effective transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms to address new challenges in peace and human rights. TJ has become the key set of policies and practices to strengthen democracy, peace, and human rights after atrocity. It has tended to target abuses by state actors or state-like actors (e.g., paramilitaries or rebel armies) in the aftermath of dictatorships and armed conflicts. Very recently policy makers and practitioners have begun adapting it to address abuses in two new contexts: ongoing armed conflict and where nonstate - business - actors participated in past violence. The only systematic research and analysis that exists on these new uses of TJ is the TJRC. The proposed follow-on project aims to enhance the value of the previously funded project by engaging in an international academic-practitioner collaboration to design, implement, and disseminate effective, empirically tested, context-specific, TJ policies to advance peace in the context of ongoing conflict and address victims' needs for justice and remedy for corporate human rights abuses.

The TJRC is the only database of its kind that tracks the adoption of seven TJ mechanisms (criminal trials, amnesties, truth commissions, civil trials, vetting, reparations, and customary justice) in 116 countries that have transitioned from authoritarian rule to democracy or armed conflict to peace between 1970 and 2012. The comprehensive database allowed the team to generate 'path-breaking results' (communication from Prof Guillermo Trejo, University of Notre Dame, 14 June 2016) regarding the impact of TJ on strengthening democracy, human rights, and peace. Cross-national databases, such as the TJRC, generate global patterns and impact, but often have limited utility for practitioners' day-to-day work in the fields of conflict resolution and human rights. The TJRC's cross-national comparative and nuanced case study data and analysis overcomes this weakness of other studies. It has proved useful for adaptation to effective policy and practice in unique country contexts. The proposed partnership with ANDHES, an organization that has adapted and implemented TJRC models in Argentina, provides the know-how to extend the collaboration to five additional countries and beyond. These models are in demand by practitioners working in countries emerging from armed conflict and attempting to promote human rights' victims' rights for redress and remedy.

The TJRC thus fills a void in knowledge about existing and effective models. The partnership with ANDHES adds practical and logistical know-how in adapting those models. Rather than impose these models, however, the partnership responds to a demand for engagement from domestic and international stakeholders to adapt and implement them to suit particular contexts. The collaboration aims to design and implement appropriate, context-specific, TJ mechanisms based on TJRC findings and ANDHES's experience to Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru. It will develop a draft truth commission, a strategic litigation manual, TJ mechanisms for peace in ongoing conflict, and models to support implementation (amicus curiae and policy briefs and news articles).

Building on existing collaborations, the partnership aims to develop a collaboration with participating organizations in five countries and key international organizations to design, adapt, implement, and disseminate effective 'best practices' for TJ in ongoing conflict and for corporate human rights abuses. It plans to develop a wider international network of users, including potential new users (specifically in South Africa), to expand the impact of the project globally. Finally it will work with those potential partners to develop funding proposals for future impact activities.

The foremost objective of the follow-on project is to advance peace processes in ongoing conflict and address victims' demands for justice and remedy for corporate human rights abuses. The project relies on the highly regarded findings of the AHRC-funded TRJC. Rather than adopt a single mechanism to fit all situations, the TJRC provides a range of models that have been empirically tested in situations around the world. The proposed project will disseminate TJRC models for adaptation and implementation in a collaboration with human rights practitioners in five specific countries, in international organizations, and in potential new user organizations.

The project's peace objective will specifically benefit Colombians who have lived in violent conflict for over 50 years. In collaboration with local and international actors in Colombia engaged in the current peace process, this project will use the TJRC to identify, adapt, and implement models of successful TJ practices that have ended conflict elsewhere. It will further benefit international actors engaged in peace processes around the world by putting in their hands the set of mechanisms identified in the TJRC as successful in ending conflict which they may draw on and adapt to their everyday work. The aim is to develop TJ tools for peace based on successful lived experiences and that are adaptable to other contexts to increase the likelihood of sustainable peace.

The main beneficiaries for the corporate human rights abuse objective are victims of those abuses in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru. The TJRC identifies successful models for addressing the needs of victims for justice and remedy after human rights atrocities committed by companies. These models include truth commissions and civil and criminal litigation. In the case of Colombia, the project involves collaborating in the design of a truth commission to investigate and make recommendations regarding such abuses, drawing from the existing sets of prior truth commission models. The other countries already held truth commissions that identified companies complicit in human rights violations during armed conflict and dictatorships. In these countries, the project will involve a collaboration to develop innovative litigation strategies to address victims' needs. The collaboration will consider which models are most appropriate to adapt to the specific country contexts and what legal, political, or social barriers might need to be overcome for their effectiveness. In addition, the project will work with international actors to support these in-country strategies and to expand their use to other contexts. The proposed partnership with ANDHES brings into the collaboration the practical experience of a human rights organization that has already successfully designed and implemented strategic civil and criminal litigation processes for past corporate abuses in the Argentine dictatorship and has participated in the design of a truth commission on corporate complicity.

Positive impact depends on the mutual trust that has developed between the Oxford team, ANDHES, and the participating local and international organizations. It relies on equal and active participation and recognition of the skills and expertise each organization brings to the collaboration. The TJRC is capable of putting tools in the hands of practitioners; sharpening those tools and adapting them appropriately will emerge through engagement and discussion with country and policy experts. The engagement of practitioners in the project is thus crucial to sophisticated and effective context-sensitive policy design and implementation. In sum, follow-on support from the AHRC (with existing co-funding from Open Society and ESRC-IAA), will enable the Oxford-ANDHES team to enhance the value and impact of the TJRC's empirically-tested models for advancing peace and promoting justice and remedy for human rights victims.