Workshop 7: Truth Recovery for Missing Persons in Times of Transition
Abstract
A growing number of recently democratized
countries are attempting to address their violent past, creating an
urgent need to understand how to transform human rights issues into
building blocks of reconciliation. Despite the fact that human rights
have taken centre stage in the agenda of international politics, little
empirical evidence has been provided to trace the precise relationship
between dealing with human rights violations of the ancien régime and
the prospects of peaceful democratic transition. And although enforced
disappearances as a result of political violence have become an endemic
feature of contemporary conflict globally, the study of the phenomenon
and its relationship to transitional justice has not received much
attention.
The workshop highlights the importance of
comparing experiences of enforced disappearances in post-conflict and
post-authoritarian settings to guide academic research and assist
policy-makers dealing with similar problems.
The workshop aims to make an innovative
contribution to the limited knowledge on the complex relationship
between truth recovery for missing persons and peaceful democratic
transitions. The primary objective of the workshop is to understand how
to transform protracted human rights problems into stepping stones of
reconciliation in times of transition. It also intends to elucidate the
interplay between individual justice and social/political necessities of
reconciliation. Participants are encouraged to submit proposals that
would engage with the political, legal, social, psychological and
anthropological dimensions related to truth recovery.
Description
Truth recovery for missing persons in times of transitions
1. Background
Does the accommodation of problems deriving
from past human rights abuses in post-conflict and post-authoritarian
settings enhance the prospect of a peaceful democratic transition? When
international organizations negotiate the provisions of democratic
transition in the aftermath of the recent uprisings in Maghreb and other
recently democratized countries, should the violent legacy of the past
be included in the agenda, and if so, how?
A specific problem, in this connection, is the
one of enforced disappearances. Can the demands of the relatives of
missing persons in societies as diverse as Lebanon, Georgia (Abkhazia),
Libya, Chechnya, Spain, Turkey, Bosnia and Cyprus be accommodated
without endangering the overarching objectives of political settlement,
stability, and democratic consolidation? And how are these country
situations compared between themselves? Cyprus, Bosnia and Spain have
been considered successful examples of bringing closure to deep trauma
by exhuming and identifying their missing persons under considerably
different conditions. In other countries, truth recovery remains a
pressing demand from large sectors of local societies. The workshop aims
at bringing together experts from various disciplines to examine these
questions and related themes.
A growing number of recently democratized
countries are attempting to address their violent past, creating an
urgent need to understand how to transform human rights issues into
building blocks of reconciliation. It has been argued, on the one hand,
that failure to address and redress past human rights abuses during
transitions increases the risk of the recurrence of conflict because
wounds left unattended tend to fester (Hayner 2002). On the other hand,
critics insist that an effort to link sensitive questions of human
rights to political negotiations increases the risk of a violent
backlash, since the public acknowledgment of contentious aspects of the
past has the potential to mobilize spoiler groups and derail
peace/democratization processes (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003).
Despite the fact that human rights have taken
centre stage in the agenda of international politics, little empirical
evidence has been provided to trace the precise relationship between
dealing with human rights violations of the ancien régime and the
prospects of peaceful democratic transition (Olsen et al 2010). And
although enforced disappearances as a result of political violence have
become an endemic feature of contemporary conflict globally, the study
of the phenomenon and its relationship to transitional justice has not
received much attention. According to the most recent report by the UN
Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) more
than 80 countries have experienced cases of enforced disappearances.
Still, little notice has been taken of the long-term political, legal,
social, security and psychological risks associated with the
(mis)management of the problem of enforced disappearances in societies
emerging from conflict.
2. Research Questions
The workshop aims to make an innovative and
important contribution to the limited knowledge on the complex
relationship between truth recovery for missing persons and peaceful
democratic transitions. It considers five interrelated and pressing
questions:
(1) To what extent does truth recovery for
missing persons increase the risk of instability in post-conflict
settings?
(2) Under which conditions is it better to tie
victims’ rights to an overall political settlement? Alternatively,
should human rights issues be treated separately?
(3) How is the right to truth assessed in
relation to amnesties for serious and gross human rights violations?
What is the validity and role of amnesties as a transitional justice and
legal tool?
(4) Why do certain societies defer the
recovery of truth about past human rights abuses, even once the
democratic regime has been fully consolidated?
(5) Under which circumstances a successful
resolution of the problem of enforced disappearances can catalyse a
transformation of relatives’ associations into platforms of grassroots
reconciliation that mitigate the risk of conflict?
The workshop is placed within the scholarship
on transitional justice, human rights law, democratization and conflict
resolution studies and will seek to test a number of alternative
hypotheses coming from these disciplines. Participants are particularly
encouraged to examine whether a decision to tackle past human rights
abuses triggers instability (Snyder and Vinjamuri 2003) or increases the
prospect of a peaceful democratic transition (Minow 2002). Also,
participants are requested to look at conflict resolution literature,
scrutinizing competing arguments over the necessity to de-link
particularly sensitive human rights issues from complex political
negotiations (Bazerman and Neale 1993).
Drawing on social psychology, the workshop
calls on participants to consider the extent to which the symbolic
capital of the relatives of missing persons nurtures cultures of
victimhood that become the basis for the perpetuation of violence (Smyth
2007). Similarly, the role of victims’ associations in post-conflict
settings has been under-studied, failing to account for the
unpredictable positions adopted by different relatives’ associations.
While the ‘Mothers of the May Square’, in Argentina, deployed the
problem of disappearances as a means to establish a comprehensive human
rights culture based on the inclusive slogan ‘Never again’ (Nunca Mas),
in Cyprus and Bosnia the official organizations of the relatives of
missing had used their symbolic capital to advocate the ethnic monopoly
of suffering. The workshop aspires to focus both on the ‘dark side’ of
victims’ associations, frequently destabilizing transitions, while
simultaneously it will investigate the occasional, yet puzzling,
transformation of political elites, bureaucrats, and grassroots actors
from sceptics to vocal proponents of the resolution of human rights
issues.
3. Significance
The analysis highlights the importance of
comparing experiences of enforced disappearances in post-conflict and
post-authoritarian settings to guide academic research and assist
policy-makers dealing with similar problems. This is important: a
growing number of developed countries have started to establish
mechanisms to address past human rights issues, as for example, the
recent decision of the Turkish government to trace the whereabouts of
disappeared Turkish citizens, while a similar debate is facing serious
impediments in Spain due to the recent case against Judge Garzon.
At the same time, an advanced legal and
normative framework related to the practice of enforced disappearances
has been developed over the past decade, mainly through the adoption of
the UN Convention for the protection of all persons against enforced
disappearances and the Rome Convention for the International Criminal
Court. These instruments render possible the prospect of indicting
domestic leaders before national or international courts possible over
the coming years, as the experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo
and Sudan indicate. Meanwhile, families of missing or disappeared
persons in zones of protracted conflict are still striving to locate
their relatives and cope with prolonged distress. Therefore, there is an
urgent need to investigate the complex relationship between the legal
and political instruments currently deployed to accommodate the problem
of enforced disappearances and their success in decreasing long-term
political, social, security and psychological risks in societies
emerging from conflict.
In sum, the problem of enforced disappearances
constitutes a critical area of inquiry because of its potential to
decrease the level of suffering in conflict zones and forestall the
creation of cultures of victimhood that perpetuate violence. Therefore,
the workshop will seek to explore the normative, social and political
reasons why societies defer the recovery of truth for missing persons
and second how they can transform sensitive human rights problems into
lasting peace.
4. Deadlines
The deadline for the submission of paper
proposals is 15 September 2012. Applications can only be submitted
on-line through the electronic application form available at
www.eui.eu/RSCAS/MRM2013. Participants are expected to submit the final
version of their paper (approx. 8,500 words) no later than 15 February
2013. They will be invited to attend an international workshop inMersin,
Turkey from 20-23 March 2013. Selected papers of the workshop will be
published in an edited volume with an established academic press.
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