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.

Citizenship education in divided societies: Teachers’ perspectives in Northern Ireland

This paper aimed to investigate in what ways teachers’ developing understandings of citizenship education in a divided society reflect discourses around national citizenship and controversial issues. Based on thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 post-primary teachers in Northern Ireland undertaking an in-service programme in citizenship, findings indicate that the controversial nature of past conflict maintains its sensitivity in the educational context though other categories of potential exclusion, such as race and sexuality, compete for space in educational discourse and teaching. Few teachers used controversial issues identified as challenging hegemonic beliefs as an opportunity for role modelling citizenship. However, teachers rarely explored the complex interlinkages between traditional and alternative categories of exclusion. It is argued that this may render teachers’ understandings of citizenship and societal conflict disconnected, which in turn may hinder the potential for citizenship education to address societal divisions and to promote active peace in the long-term.

The contours of memory in post-conflict societies: enacting public remembrance of the bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland

Drawing on the theoretical insights of Paul Ricoeur this paper investigates the geographies of public remembrance in a post-conflict society. In Northern Ireland, where political divisions have found expression through acts of extreme violence over the past 30 years, questions of memory and an amnesty for forgetting have particular resonance both at the individual and societal level, and render Ricoeur’s framework particularly prescient. Since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, initiating the Peace Process through consociational structures, discovering a nomenclature and set of practices which would aid in the rapprochement of a deeply divided society has presented a complex array of issues. In this paper I examine the various practices of public remembrance of the 1998 bombing of Omagh as a means of understanding how memory-spaces evolve in a post-conflict context. In Omagh there were a variety of commemorative practices instituted and each, in turn, adopted a different contour towards achieving reconciliation with the violence and grief of the bombing. In particular the Garden of Light project is analysed as a collective monument which, with light as its metaphysical centre, invited the populace to reflect backward on the pain of the bombing while at the same time enabling the society to look forward toward a peaceful future where a politics of hope might eclipse a politics of despair.