Volume 4 Number 2 June 2005

SUSANA KAISER examines the promising beginning of the Argentinean democratization process. The commission to investigate disappearances (1983-84) and the military juntas’ trials (1985) were without precedent in a region devastated by state terrorism. Argentina showed the world that it was capable of addressing matters of truth and justice; it became a key global case study for communities dealing with the aftermath of violence, issues of impunity and accountability, or questions of reconciliation, and forgiveness. Then, a process of legalization of impunity revealed the civilian government’s partial commitment to justice as well as the military’s power to set limits. However, in 2004, major events are unfolding which might set new historical precedents concerning justice for crimes against humanity. At this historical moment, both local initiatives and the globalization of justice are influencing the possibility of canceling the cycle of impunity. Kaise takes us back to a period where prospects for justice were not very promising. In 1998, more than two decades after the coup of 1976, I asked a group of young people: “If you were Minister of Justice, what would you do regarding this past?” Kaiser then explores young Argentineans’ opinions about the political and legal system, their feelings of anger and impotence, and what they think should be done. She analyzes evaluations of the need for justice and recommendations on whom should be punished, why, and how. This information is helpful to understand how young people view Argentina’s past as a background against which current changes are occurring. Kaiser also sheds light on how the post-dictatorship generation was conceptualizing justice and the roles they may play to create a culture of accountability and respect for human rights.

SUSAN SHEPLER describes some of the ways the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other international child rights instruments are implicated in the process of post-war reintegration of child ex-combatants in Sierra Leone. Data is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork throughout Sierra Leone from 1999 to 2001. The CRC and the Western construction of childhood as innocent and apolitical gets used strategically by various actors including children, their families, communities, teachers, NGO workers, and the state. Child rights discourse and practice in some ways eases the reintegration of child ex-combatants by buttressing “discourses of abdicated responsibility” in children’s narrations of their war experiences thereby facilitating forgiveness and acceptance. However, this model of innocent child is in conflict with an earlier model of youth as hard working and humble. In the struggle to reintegrate child soldiers, a new model of youth emerges in Sierra Leone, a model informed by the global human rights regime, but created in everyday practice at the intersection of the global and the local.

VICTOR PESKIN explores the issue of “victor’s justice” in violations of human rights. For human rights advocates, the notion of victor's justice has become increasingly distasteful in the decades since Nuremberg. At first glance, the victor’s justice problem that plagued the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals appears to have been transcended by the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) given their mandate to prosecute all serious violations of international humanitarian law. But the tribunals’ lack of police powers give states wide latitude to withhold the vital assistance the tribunals need to investigate atrocities and bring suspects to trial. The aim of this article is to evaluate the tribunals’ approach to the victor’s justice question and assess the extent to which they have held the victorious protagonists in the Balkan and Rwandan conflicts accountable for atrocities committed during wartime. The article imparts two main lessons about the difficulties that international tribunals confront when attempting to prosecute war crimes suspects from the winning side of an armed conflict. First, tactics by states targeted by a tribunal can significantly limit a tribunal’s ability to realize justice in a fair and evenhanded manner. Second, tactics by powerful international actors in relation to a targeted state can significantly constrain or expand the space in which a targeted state can act to undermine a tribunal. In certain situations, the tribunals may increase the prospects of state cooperation by crafting effective strategies to subject the state’s behavior to international scrutiny and condemnation. In 1999, a UN expert group concluded that having a single prosecutor for both tribunals was a sound idea.

ROBIN MARIA DELUGAN explores the linkages between local and international efforts in promoting stability in postwar El Salvador. High levels of violence and social polarization continue to destabilize a fragmented society. In an effort to combat this instability, projects have emerged to foster social reconstruction by promoting national culture and identity. The goal of international humanitarian intervention in these projects is to link national cultural campaigns to universally accepted values and the practice of democratic citizenship (including human rights). This is in contrast to other national projects that sought to develop common social bonds by promoting the uniqueness of El Salvador’s culture, history and identity. This article examines two post-war projects: UNESCO’s pilot “Culture of Peace Program for El Salvador” and a Salvadoran government "Values Program" newly introduced into the national educational curriculum. The UNESCO project was an experiment in global governance, in that it attempts to inform state and society in El Salvador of the cultural values and expectations for participation in a global community. The second program, designed to transform society by inculcating select cultural values, is influenced by the earlier UNESCO iniative especially in the program’s focus on universal values and its emphasis on the ideals of democratic citizenship. This paper illustrates the interplay of global and localized governance strategies as social actors in El Salvador debate, adapt and transform cultural prescriptions for strengthening post-war society.

WILLIAM A. HAYES explores the third wave of democratization, post-authoritarian states have addressed human rights injustices and civil strife through a process of political accountability. These practices in accountability (public trials, reparations, memorials), however, have not achieved their stated goals of social justice and national reconciliation. I argue post-authoritarian administrations privatize state violence and, thereby, diffuse public mobilizations for social justice, while effacing the legacy of human rights struggles by re-framing public narratives in mnemonic sites. This paper provides two South Korean case studies of state violence and political accountability: the April 19th Student Revolution of 1960 and the May 18th Kwangju Massacre of 1980. In both cases, the state used its military force to impose public order, resulting in civilian deaths. In post-authoritarian periods (1960-1961, 1994-1995), civilian administrations re-visited these injustices to exemplify political accountability and the reconstitution of human rights. However, I argue that without popular mobilization to pressure the new state, post-authoritarian regimes would not have risked destabilizing the conditions of new governance.

JOSEPH NEVINS explores the connection between memory and horrific events, historian Tzvetan Todorov makes a distinction between two ideal types of memories--literal ones and exemplary ones. Literal memories limit their focus to the event(s) relating to the particular experience of horror without making any connections of empathy to other horrendous occurrences. Such memories are employed to connect individuals, groups, and other events to the specific suffering in question and, in the process, condemn all those associated with the authors of the original trauma. Exemplary memories, on the other hand, seek to make connections between the suffering they recollect and other events of horror, thus opening their memories to analogy and generalization and making it possible to extract lessons that can inform present and future practices aimed at combating injustices. All memories of horror--whether literal or exemplary--are attached to particular dates and places. And just as there are literal or exemplary memories of gross atrocities, there are literal or exemplary memorialized spaces of horror and tragedy. This paper explores the differential treatment of horrors on coincidental dates and in similar metaphorical spaces and the process by which memories and memorial sites are abused. To illustrate this, it examines horrific events associated with the dates of December 7 and September 11, and incidents of "ground zero"--from Japan to East Timor to the United States. In doing so, the paper explores the links between memory, space, and social power, arguing that whether memories and memorialized spaces are literal or exemplary has important implications for accountability and human rights in the aftermath of atrocities and the reconstruction of communities devastated by ground zero-like tragedies.