Rethinking Amnesties: Atrocity, Accountability And Impunity In Post-Conflict Societies.

The notion of accountability that is propagated in transitional justice often appears limited to demands for the prosecution and imprisonment of those who have been involved in serious human rights violations. Amnesties, widely understood as the absence of punishment for wrongdoing, are in turn considered by many scholars and activists as an example par excellence of the kind of Faustian pacts which are made in the name of political expediency in transitions from conflict. Drawing from a range of interdisciplinary literature, as well as research completed by the authors in a number of societies with a violent past, this paper uses amnesties as a case-study to argue for a more rounded interrogation of the notion of accountability in transitional justice. The paper charts the various forms of intersecting accountability which both shape and delimit amnesties at key ‘moments’ concerning their remit, introduction and operation. The paper concludes that the legalistic view of amnesties as equating to impunity and retribution as accountability is inaccurate and misleading. It argues that a broader perspective of accountability speaks directly to the capacity for amnesties to play a more constructive role in post conflict justice and peacemaking.

Amnesties in Transition: Punishment, Restoration, and the Governance of Mercy

Despite the much vaunted triumph of human rights, amnesties continue to be a frequently used technique of post-conflict transitional justice. For many critics, they are synonymous with unaccountability and injustice. This article argues that despite the rhetoric, there is no universal duty to prosecute under international law and that issues of selectivity and proportionality present serious challenges to the retributive rationale for punishment in international justice. It contends that many of the assumptions concerning the deterrent effect in the field are also oversold and poorly theorized. It also suggests that appropriately designed restorative amnesties can be both lawful and effective as routes to truth recovery, reconciliation, and a range of other peacemaking goals. Rather than mere instruments of impunity, amnesties should instead be seen as important institutions in the governance of mercy, the reassertion of state sovereignty and, if properly constituted, the return of law to a previously lawless domain.

The Historical Use of Amnesties, Immunities, and Sentence Reductions in Northern Ireland

While it is widely believed that the use of amnesties and similar measures would mark a new departure in NI and the UK, so that speculation about their introduction causes public controversy and threatens political instability, the report demonstrates that such measures have in fact been repeatedly used in a wide range of circumstances since the foundation of the NI state. The paper offers definitions of the key measures which have been employed, including amnesties, sentence reductions linked to peace building and use immunities. It explores their historical use and its consequences.

Old truths and new politics:Does truth commission 'publicness' impact democratization?

This article analyzes the relationship between truth and politics by asking whether the 'publicness' of a truth commission - defined by whether it has public hearings, releases a public report, and names perpetrators - contributes to democratization. The article reviews scholarship relevant to the potential democratizing effects of truth commissions and derives mechanisms that help explain this relationship. Work from the transitional justice field as well as democratization and political transition more generally is considered. Using a newly-constructed Truth Commission Publicness Dataset (TCPD), the analysis finds that even after statistically controlling for initial levels of democracy, democratic trends in the years prior to a commission, level of wealth, amnesties and/or trials, the influence of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and different cutoff points for measuring democratization across a number of models, more publicness predicts higher levels of democracy years after the commission has finished its work. The more public a truth commission is, the more it will contribute to democratization. The finding that more public truth commissions are associated with higher levels of democratization indicates particular strategies that policymakers, donors, and civil society activists may take to improve prospects for democracy in a country planning a truth commission in the wake of violence and/or government abuse. © The Author(s) 2012.