Contesting Transitional Justice Conference

Event details

The Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) at Coventry University is pleased to announce their forthcoming academic conference ‘Contesting Transitional Justice: Radical Perspectives’.  This one-day conference will bring together academics, doctoral students, practitioners and policymakers from across disciplines to engage with contemporary contestations on transitional justice in order to contribute to the ever-growing scholarship in this field.

The keynote speaker will be Professor Chandra Lekha Sriram with her presentation ‘Beyond transitional justice: the challenges of using law to promote peace and justice’

Professor Sriram is Professor of International Law and International Relations and Director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict at the University of East London. Her recent work has included a three-year project on the ‘Impact of Transitional Justice Measures on Democratic Institution Building (www.tjdi.org), in collaboration with Dr Anja Mihr at the University of Utrecht.  She has authored three books, edited or co-edited 11 books or special journal issues, and published over 100 articles and essays in the field of post-atrocity justice, conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Themes

In the last four decades, the transitional justice paradigm has led to a proliferation of Western, externally-driven, legalistic and state-centric mechanisms across the globe as part of confronting the legacies of past conflicts. Implicit in these interventions has been the promotion of liberal democracy, a market economy, and a narrow understanding of human rights. This one-day conference will highlight critiques of the transitional justice paradigm. It aims to bring together scholars and activists who point to the need for a transformative approach to transitional justice, one that is sensitive to issues of identity, culture and resources, is rooted in local practices and understandings of justice, and seeks to address those socio-economic inequalities and injustices that are the root causes of many violent conflicts.
The conference will be organised around the following five key themes:

• To what extent does the normative framework of transitional justice allow socio-economic injustices to be addressed?
• In what ways and on whose terms is the participation of victims and survivors in transitional justice encouraged?
• How and to what extent can transitional justice incorporate multiple identities and cultures into its approaches?  
• How successfully does liberal peacebuilding tackle the challenges in societies recovering from violent conflicts and mass repression?
• Transitional justice and the politics of truth and memory: healing or harming?

Booking information

To book your place please email events.CTPSR@coventry.ac.uk For any further enquiries, please email charlotte.martin@coventry.ac.uk

Parking

Please view map and directions.

Enquiries

For enquiries please contact Charlotte Martin

charlotte.martin@coventry.ac.uk

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