WUNRN
International Center for
Transitional Justice
Transitional
justice is a response to systematic or widespread violations of human rights.
It seeks recognition for victims and to promote possibilities for peace,
reconciliation and democracy. Transitional justice is not a special form of
justice but justice adapted to societies transforming themselves after a period
of pervasive human rights abuse.
TRANSITIONAL GENDER JUSTICE
Transitional justice approaches often neglect women's experience of political violence. Far too often, truth commission mandates, judicial opinions, reparations schemes, and reform policy proposals are written, interpreted, and implemented with little regard for the distinct and complex rights violations and injuries women suffer. Neglect of gendered patterns of abuse affects both women and men seeking access to justice by limiting the reach of reparations programs, entrenching impunity, distorting the historical record, and undermining the legitimacy of transitional justice initiatives.
Moreover, there is still very little understanding of the gendered legacies of authoritarianism, the complex and shifting relationship between extraordinary and ordinary violence, and the opportunities to enhance gender justice that transitional contexts provide.
Some notable progress has taken place through strategies such as thematic gender hearings in truth commissions, new jurisprudence on gendered international crimes, and greater focus on women victims in formulating reparations programs. However, these are disparate achievements in different fields of transitional justice and in different countries, with little systematic study of past experiences or cross-fertilization of lessons learned from these various contexts. Unfortunately, transitional justice continues to rely on ad hoc approaches to gender.
As well as learning from past mistakes, analysts also should highlight the potential stakes for women. The operational, conceptual, policy, and legal dimensions of transitional justice institutions must be critically revisited to enable more reflective, gender-sensitive practice in the field at large and in ICTJ's in-country programs in particular. This involves consulting widely with local women's groups in diverse contexts, sharing lessons learned, pooling expertise, and creatively imagining new institutional strategies to address old wrongs.
ICTJ has identified a number of strategic programmatic priorities related to these issues:
ICTJ Gender Program works in conjunction with the Center's regional programs to integrate gender into the technical assistance we provide in diverse contexts. As a key step in the Center's regionalization, in October 2007 the gender program hired an Africa gender coordinator, Helen Scanlon, based in ICTJ's Cape Town office. Her expertise on the intersection of gender and issues such as peace-building, truth commissions, legal proceedings, and human security has already contributed significantly to developing the gender aspects of ICTJ country programming in the DRC, Liberia, and Uganda, as well as integrating gender into newer country programs such as Burundi and subregional programming in Southern Africa.
Since 2004 ICTJ has worked in Liberia, primarily on security sector reform (SSR) and the development and operations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Drawing on her experience in Timor-Leste ICTJ consultant Karen Campbell-Nelson spent six weeks on the ground in Liberia to help draft a gender policy for the TRC. With the expansion of ICTJ's Liberia office, the new program associate, Lizzie Goodfriend, will serve as liaison to the Gender Program. This provides an opportunity to ensure that gender issues remain on the TRC agenda while the program explores other opportunities to promote gender justice in Liberia.
Addressing the Ghana National Reconciliation Commission's inattention to women's issues, ICTJ worked with local women's groups to study women's testimonials to the NRC and analyze the Commission's failed attempts to address the gendered record of human rights violations. In October 2006 the program's "Ghana Voices" project cosponsored a workshop for representatives of civil society, government, and the media to discuss the women's draft reports and raise awareness of the gendered nature of Ghana's legacy of abuse. Women's activists stated that this project was critical to filling the void in the Commission's work on women: the ongoing challenges of women's access to justice. ICTJ will publish the two papers from this project in spring 2008.
In June 2007 the Gender Program coordinated with ICTJ's Kinshasa office staff to organize a conference on gender and transitional justice for more than 50 participants representing diverse women's groups from 11 DRC provinces. The workshop provided a forum for dialogue between ICTJ and local women's groups about their priorities for gender justice. Workshop participants produced a set of recommendations and action items for the DRC government, the international community, and ICTJ. A detailed report in French and English will be a useful tool and guide for the program's ongoing in-country engagement, showing the various TJ mechanisms at work as they have addressed and related to gender justice issues.
In Afghanistan in 2007 ICTJ explored gender justice priorities of local civil society. ICTJ is also currently working with UNIFEM to provide training on the documentation of human rights violations against women, including oral history methodologies.
In June 2007 ICTJ collaborated with the Sisters Arab Forum, a women's rights group in Yemen, to convene a workshop in Sana'a that brought together 25 gender-focused human rights activists from nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The workshop focused on the Moroccan Truth Commission's experience to understand the transitional justice field's relevance to political and social conditions in the MENA region. Participants expressed a keen interest in unofficial, community-based transitional justice processes as a means to address human rights violations in a political climate lacking the will to undertake national measures. Because both gender-justice and TJ issues are particularly difficult to discuss in the MENA region, the workshop marks a critical opening of space for dialogue and ongoing engagement. The Center's interventions in this area seek to ensure that truth commissions and other transitional justice mechanisms are formulated with adequate attention to empowering local movements for gender justice and redressing and preventing future human rights abuse against women.
ICTJ opened its Nepal office in 2007, and the gender program has collaborated with the Nepal country team on local capacity building. The Gender Program has taken the lead in bringing international experts to events such as the workshop organized in August 2007 on truth commissions and gender. Sofia Macher, a former commissioner on the Peruvian TRC, and Yasmin Sooka, a former commissioner on the South African TRC, facilitated the workshops, which examined gender and TRC issues through a critical and international lens.
Alongside technical assistance missions, ICTJ will work with partners to identify gaps in the field and conduct research and analysis of issues related to women's access to justice. Many of these initiatives seek to expand and reshape the parameters of the interaction between transitional justice and gender issues.
In November 2007 the program held a conference on security sector reform (SSR) to initiate critical rethinking of the field by moving from military definitions of security to more holistic approaches to human security. The meeting brought together people with a wide array of SSR and gender expertise to discuss the interplay between the two fields, raising issues of language, mainstreaming, and gender justice.
The Gender Program is currently undertaking research projects to reconceptualize how transitional justice has addressed gender-based violations. A ground-breaking project on sexual minorities reveals the hidden histories of systematic violations they have suffered during times of conflict. This study seeks to situate these abuses within the transitional justice paradigm and recommend how analysts can address their experiences.
To promote the integration of gender into transitional justice work, the program also develops resource materials on gender issues for use by ICTJ partner organizations. These materials include case studies on gender dimensions of the truth commissions of Haiti, Peru, South Africa, and Timor-Leste, as well as handbooks on gender and truth commissions and gender and prosecutions. The handbook on gender and truth commissions has been translated into Arabic, French, and Spanish; it was used by the Moroccan Truth Commission. A similar handbook on gender and prosecutions is forthcoming in 2008.
The program has also developed multimedia training modules on gender and transitional justice. Like the handbooks, these modules lay the groundwork for the systematic application of gender analysis to various transitional justice approaches. In addition to English, these resource materials will be translated into Arabic, French, and Spanish.
The Gender Program supports innovative global advocacy initiatives such as the campaign for justice by Asian former "comfort women." It also develops alliances and exchanges to create an international pool of expertise on gender and transitional justice. The Gender and Transitional Justice Workshop held in Bellagio, Italy, in April 2005 provided a foundation for critical analysis of the field by examining the conceptual, policy, and legal dimensions of transitional justice institutions. The workshop facilitated many stimulating exchanges among some of the most insightful academics and practitioners working on gender justice around the world. The Columbia Journal of Gender and Law published the four concept papers commissioned for the workshop.
Addressing past injustices is critical to women's struggles for human rights. Political transitions can provide an extraordinary opportunity to enhance women's access to justice, reclaim public space, and build momentum for fundamental reform. ICTJ seeks to take advantage of this opportunity for social transformation by contributing to women's struggles for justice, a voice, and historical memory.
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