How do societies seek to come to terms with legacies of large-scale abuses in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation? And what role can victims play in this process? These are crucial questions for scholars and practitioners of transitional justice (TJ).
TJ practitioners and scholars alike have increasingly been turning to victim-centric, participatory approaches to increase the legitimacy and “efficacy” of TJ processes.
By giving victims centre stage, stakeholders hope to better address victims’ needs, enhance local ownership and transform victims into agents of change who can carry forth processes of justice seeking after international actors leave.
But what do we really know about how to best organize this victim participation, or what its long-term effects are?
This website brings you the results of, amongst other things, an ERC-funded research project (VictPart 804154) that examines this question.
On November 18th at 17:00 (CET) Gretel Mejía, PhD Research Fellow of Justice Visions, will be doing an interview about her research project on Voces de Mujeres, a feminist radio show based in Guatemala City.
Read MoreRights2LIFE: Towards a Responsive Criminal Justice System in the Philippines is a capacity-building and research project between Ghent University and the University of Cordilleras in Luzon, the Philippines. The Filipino nation currently faces worsening disregard for the rule of law and disrespect for human rights, , as evident in glaring extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests and detentions, [...]
Read MoreTine Destrooper joined the Advisory Board of ‘Can the Arts Save Human Rights’ hosted at the University of York’s Center for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) The project [...]
Read MoreConsolidated democracies are increasingly facing pressures to come to terms with the legacy of their violent colonial pasts, and to address how these pasts bear upon the present. Accountability for historical (and ongoing) wrongdoings and injustices related to colonialism is a crucial component thereof. On September 23rd, through a set of round tables, this one-day […]
Read MoreIn line with the practice orientation of the Justice Visions project, Justice Visions PI Tine Destrooper, joined the editors of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford University Press), to push debates at the intersection of human rights scholarship and practice in new directions. The journal is the leading academic journal focusing on human rights practice and activism.
Read MoreThis year, for the first time, the Flemish universities joined forces to select around twenty inter-university and inter-disciplinary research projects funded through BOF. A research project on human rights accountability in which two professors of the Human Rights Centre take up a leading role, was awarded one of these grants. Tine Destrooper and Marie-Bénédicte Dembour […]
Read MoreOn the 29th of December 2020, twenty-four years after the signing of the final peace agreement, the Human Rights Center of the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Guatemalan Constitutional Court on the international standards on reparations and victims’ rights. The amicus curiae was submitted within an amparo action […]
Read MoreAs part of the Justice Visions project, and with the support of the European Research Council, we are this month launching our own podcast series, to showcase groundbreaking research and innovative practices in the field of transitional justice. The pilot episode highlighted the need to disseminate research about transitional justice in ongoing conflicts and democracies […]
Read MoreSangeetha Yogendran, together with Youth for Peace Cambodia, present submission to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia In October 2021, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia issued a Call for Contributions from relevant stakeholders with respect to the ECCC’s Residual Functions Related to Victims. The Call for Contributions asked for the provision […]
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