Discussion lines on gender and transitional justice: an introductory essay reflecting on the ICTJ Bellagio workshop on gender and transitional justice *.

• Author: Nesiah, Vasuki
• Position: ESSAYS ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

Feminist interventions have challenged the field of transitional justice, developed approaches, and formulated critiques that have revisited many foundational assumptions regarding the human rights canon and the role of legal processes, truth commissions, and other institutions in advancing justice struggles. In some areas feminist interventions in practice and scholarship had gained wider recognition and influenced developments in the field. However, in many other areas, feminist interventions have remained on the margins, with little discussion occurring even among feminists. It was in this context that the ICTJ (1) gender program sought to convene a seminar that would take stock of feminist approaches in the field of transitional justice thus far while also providing a forum for considering how feminist critical inquiry may continue to transform the intellectual boundaries and settled practices of the field. It was also a seminar for debating differences among feminists regarding political priorities and strategies. The discussion was structured around the four commissioned pre-circulated papers on ideas of "victimization," "truth," "justice," and "political violence" that are published in this volume. Each of the paper presentations and subsequent discussions addressed the conceptual assumptions behind transitional justice approaches in countries as diverse as India, Australia, South Africa, and Northern Ireland, foregrounding critical debates about what is at stake in transitional justice for feminists, and considering what "engendering" transitional justice actually means.

Creating and fostering a space for constructive debate and engendering a critically reflective practice presented provocative challenges in both the planning process and the unfolding of the seminar itself. We questioned whether to engage with the canon by structuring discussion against the received precepts of 'transitional justice', or to use a different starting point that would not re-inscribe the field's constitutive assumptions in contesting them. For instance, practitioners and scholars may often refer to the "pillars" of transitional justice: prosecutions, truth commissions (TRCs), reparations, institutional reform, and reconciliation initiatives. These are the established institutional avenues that structure and shape the conceptual imagination of the field, and ground its normative vision through institutions and practices. In organizing this seminar, however, we chose not to structure the discussion around these pillars, in hopes of launching a discussion that would allow us to revisit the boundaries of transitional justice.

Similar questions arose in shaping the participant mix. Considering that there are those who are "true believers" in the promise of international law, and others who are skeptics or agnostics who see transitional justice as merely a strategy towards certain political goals, we sought to cultivate a productive conversation between those who have been immersed in transitional justice institutions and others who have stood outside it as critics. Thus, the seminar gathered together people who were located differently across the field. Some were pivotal figures in different parts of the globe in longstanding efforts to push the boundaries of transitional justice through feminist interventions, while others had done little or no work in transitional justice but had done interesting critical work in the broader field of human rights and humanitarian law.

Finally, the participant mix was an effort to bring together different kinds of activists, some of whom were primarily scholars and others who were primarily practitioners. This cross-fertilization was both challenging and productive because often academics and practitioners are engaged in parallel, non-intersecting conversations, and this workshop intended to provide them with an opportunity to interact. There were some participants who straddle the worlds of academia and practice, but many in the room had previously been only in separate worlds, shaped by different imperatives and even different visions of what was at stake in transitional justice. Perhaps even more so than in other areas of human rights practice, the field of transitional justice has been insulated from critical legal studies, post-colonial studies, and other efforts to problematize the emancipatory potential of transitional justice institutions and the monopoly that human rights discourse has claimed over struggles for justice. Often transitional justice practitioners find themselves working in contexts of extreme violence and mass crimes where there is an urgent imperative to respond, to identify "perpetrators" and to advocate for "victims." This imperative to action may not always permit institutional space to engage with efforts that may complicate a political and legal mapping premised on sharp distinctions between "perpetrators" and "victims" and between episodes of heinous crimes and a "post-conflict" peace. At the same time, practitioners also engender critical approaches that can remain elusive to the academic because practitioners are immersed in complex, challenging daily circumstances, often directly confront the limitations and biases of the field, agonize over the need to balance competing priorities, and have to develop innovative approaches to established practices. Few academics have a window into this world and there are a limited number of contexts where genuine cross-fertilization is possible. This workshop sought to engender such a space.

Workshop discussion was stimulating and challenging and brought out the rich diversity of thought within feminism and the complex range of perspectives among participants. The rest of this introductory essay to the edited papers that follow highlights discussion themes that emerged in the course of the workshop, including official truth, women's testimony, sexual violence, engaging with courts, "victim" identity, transitional justice and nation building, transitional justice and liberal orthodoxies, and the relationship between theory and practice.

1. OFFICIAL TRUTH

   For many the notion of "Truth" has Orwellian dimensions that haunt official "truth-seeking" commissions. For others, "truth seeking" is in fact a counter-Orwellian project that seeks to unpack national myths and give space to marginalized voices--to institutionally embody the argument for viewing the past as a contested terrain regarding multiple partial truths. In the seminar, these discussions were motivated by a focus on how women's voices were recorded and assimilated into official processes. Were these processes an opportunity for "voice" on the national stage, or were they alienating and exploitative of those "voices"?

   Equally, there was discussion about whether these "official" truths artificially constructed walls between the "pre-independence" and "post-independence" periods of recently colonized states. The mandates of most truth commission processes focused on the post-colonial period. However, explaining human rights accountability in terms that were confined to the post-colonial era also legitimized the idea that this was about national history and post-colonial history, rather than being about an internationalized history, a history with continuities and discontinuities with colonialism. Here discussion also turned to contexts such as Rwanda and the DRC. Limiting the retrospective reach of transitional justice to post-colonial time frames is quite problematic in screening out the continued scars of colonial rule and the enduring responsibilities of colonial powers.

   There was also discussion about whether truth commission reports enter the terrain of historical interpretation. One participant noted that a Commissioner in Chile writing the report about reparations for torture victims decided that it was not the task of truth commissions to write history...