Lateinamerika in der globalen Zirkulation von Expertise über den Umgang mit historischem Unrecht. Das Beispiel der Wahrheitskommissionen

Since the 1980s, the ways societies grapple with past human rights violations have become another area that is increasingly exposed to specialized knowledge production. Together with the profound changes in the dealing with the legacies of illegal or illegitimate exercise of power over the last decades, the expertise in the field not only expanded dramatically, but also became more diversified. The transitions from military dictatorships to democracies in South America in the 1980’s marked the historical beginning of this new era of coming to terms with the past, conceptualized in the following decade paradigmatically in the field of “transitional justice”. The subcontinent remained a central site in the global production and circulation of this knowledge, not least in regard to the two major innovations in societies’ arsenal of means of dealing with the past and their increasing conventionalization: the internationalization and transnationalization of the criminal prosecution of gross human rights violations and the truth commissions. Focusing on the expertise about truth commissions, the article aims to reconstruct and to analyze the role of Latin American experiences and actors in the remarkable global career of a key instrument in confronting past atrocities

Die grenzüberschreitende Übertragung von Wissen über Transitional Justice und ihre Akteure in historischer Perspektive

Historische Ansätze sind in der Betrachtung von Transitional Justice rar geblieben. Den weitreichenden Veränderungen, die das Feld im Zuge seiner Ausdehnung zum weltweit dominierenden Reflexions- und Handlungszusammenhang im Umgang mit historischem Unrecht erfahren hat, ist deshalb in aller Regel keine angemessene Beachtung geschenkt worden. Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich aus historischer Sicht den Fragen, wie seit den späten 1980er Jahren über die Grenzen nationaler Aufarbeitungsschauplätze hinaus Wissen über Transitional Justice generiert und übertragen worden ist, welche die beteiligten Akteursgruppen waren und welche Auswirkungen der Wandel in den Wissenstransfers und im Verhältnis zwischen den Akteuren auf die Entwicklungen im Feld hatte. Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse steht dabei das Instrument der Wahrheitskommissionen. Historical approaches to the study of transitional justice are rare. In the process of its expansion to the dominating paradigm in dealing with past injustices, the field experienced far reaching changes. Scholarship about transitional justice, however, has hardly taken into account these shifts in appropriate ways. This article examines from a historical point of view how knowledge about transitional justice was generated and transferred across the borders of the national sites of dealing with the past, what were the groups of actors involved and what effects the transformations of the knowledge circulation as well as of the relationship between the actors since the late 1980s had on the development of the field. The focus of the analysis, thereby, is on the instrument of truth commissions.

Frequent floods in the European Alps coincide with cooler periods of the past 2500 years

Severe floods triggered by intense precipitation are among the most destructive natural hazards in Alpine environments, frequently causing large financial and societal damage. Potential enhanced flood occurrence due to global climate change would thus increase threat to settlements, infrastructure, and human lives in the affected regions. Yet, projections of intense precipitation exhibit major uncertainties and robust reconstructions of Alpine floods are limited to the instrumental and historical period. Here we present a 2500-year long flood reconstruction for the European Alps, based on dated sedimentary flood deposits from ten lakes in Switzerland. We show that periods with high flood frequency coincide with cool summer temperatures. This wet-cold synchronism suggests enhanced flood occurrence to be triggered by latitudinal shifts of Atlantic and Mediterranean storm tracks. This paleoclimatic perspective reveals natural analogues for varying climate conditions, and thus can contribute to a better understanding and improved projections of weather extremes under climate change.