A Racionalidade jurídica da Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos no caso Gomes Lund e outros VS Brasil

Mesmo após trinta anos de consolidação democrática no Brasil o tema da justiça de transição ainda faz parte do nosso debate jurídico. Atualmente vive-se uma insegurança jurídica quanto à validade da lei de anistia brasileira, uma vez que o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) e a Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos (CorteIDH) julgaram a questão em sentidos opostos. Almejando contribuir para esse debate, tendo como objeto a decisão da CorteIDH, o presente artigo busca responder aos seguintes questionamentos: Ao julgar caso Gomes Lund e outros vs Brasil, quais foram os principais temas abordados pela CorteIDH que fez com que ela chegasse à conclusão de que a lei de anistia brasileira é inválida? Como se deu sua construção argumentativa, e quais foram suas principais fontes de embasamento normativo e jurisprudencial? Em suma, qual foi a racionalidade jurídica da Corte no julgamento desse caso? Para responder a essas perguntas de pesquisa buscou-se levantar indutivamente as principais questões abordadas na sentença e problematizar a responsabilidade do Brasil em relação ao Sistema Interamericano de Direitos Humanos.

Gacaca and DDR : the disputable record of state-building in Rwanda

State-building is currently considered to be an indispensable process in overcoming state fragility: a condition characterized by frequent armed conflicts as well as chronic poverty. In this process, both the capacity and the legitimacy of the state are supposed to be enhanced; such balanced development of capacity and legitimacy has also been demanded in security sector reform (SSR), which is regarded as being a crucial part of post-conflict state-building. To enhance legitimacy, the importance of democratic governance is stressed in both state-building and SSR in post-conflict countries. In reality, however, the balanced enhancement of capacity and legitimacy has rarely been realized. In particular, legitimacy enhancement tends to stagnate in countries in which one of multiple warring parties takes a strong grip on state power. This paper tries to understand why such unbalanced development of state-building and SSR has been observed in post-conflict countries, through a case study of Rwanda. Analyses of two policy initiatives in the security sector - Gacaca transitional justice and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) - indicate that although these programs achieved goals set by the government, their contribution to the normative objectives promoted by the international community was quite debatable. It can be understood that this is because the country has subordinated SSR to its state-building process. After the military victory of the former rebels, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the ruling elite prioritized the establishment of political stability over the introduction of international norms such as democratic governance and the rule of law. SSR was implemented only to the extent that it contributed to, and did not threaten, Rwanda's RPF-led state-building.

Investing in Peace : Foreign Direct Investment as Economic Restoration in Sierra Leone?

Peer reviewed

Investing in Peace : Foreign Direct Investment as Economic Restoration in Sierra Leone?

Peer reviewed

Realism and national identity in 'Y Tu Mamá También': an audience perspective

When referring to cinema and its emancipatory potential, realism, like Plato’s pharmakon, has signified both illness and cure, poison and medicine. On the one hand, realism is regarded as the main feature of so-called classical cinema, inherently conservative and thoroughly ideological, its main raison d’être being to reify and make a particular version of the status quo believable and to pass it out as ‘reality’ (Burch, 1990; MacCabe, 1974). On the other, realism has also been interpreted as a quest for truth and social justice, as in the positivist ethos that informs documentary (Zavattini, 1953). Even in the latter sense, however, the extent to which realism has served colonizing ends when used to investigate the ‘truth’ of the Other has also been noted, rendering the form profoundly suspicious (Chow, 2007, p. 150). For realism has been a Western form of representation, one that can be traced back to the invention of perspective in painting and that peaked with the secular worldview brought about by the Enlightenment. And like realism, the nation state too is a product of the Enlightenment, nationalism being, as it were, a secular replacement for the religious - that is enchanted or fantastic - worldview. In this way, realism, cinema and nation are inextricably linked, and equally strained under the current decline of the Enlightenment paradigm. This chapter looks at Y tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón (2001), a highly successful road movie with documentary features, to explore the ways in which realism, cinema and nation interact with each other in the present conditions of ‘globalization’ as experienced in Mexico. The chapter compares and contrasts various interpretations of the role of realism in this film put forward by critics and scholars and other discourses about it circulating in the media with actual ways of audience engagement with it.

Rightful Resistance in the Colombian conflict. A theoretical reflection based on a Peace Community

This article considers the opportunities of civilians to peacefully resist violent conflicts or civil wars. The argument developed here is based on a field-based research on the peace community San José de Apartadó in Colombia. The analytical and theoretical framework, which delimits the use of the term ‘resistance’ in this article, builds on the conceptual considerations of Hollander and Einwohner (2004) and on the theoretical concept of ‘rightful resistance’ developed by O’Brien (1996). Beginning with a conflict-analytical classification of the case study, we will describe the long-term socio-historical processes and the organizational experiences of the civilian population, which favoured the emergence of this resistance initiative. The analytical approach to the dimensions and aims of the resistance of this peace community leads to the differentiation of O`Brian’s concept of ‘rightful resistance’.

Women Lawyers and the Struggle for Change in Conflict and Transition

This article examines the particular experiences of female ‘cause lawyers’ in conflicted and transitional societies. Drawn from an ongoing comparative project which involved fieldwork in Cambodia, Chile, Israel, Palestine, Tunisia and South Africa, the paper looks at opportunities, obstacles and the obduracy required from such lawyers to ‘make a difference’ in these challenging contexts. Drawing upon the theoretical literature on the sociology of the legal profession, cause-lawyers, gender and transitional justice, and the structure/agency nexus, the article considers in turn the conflict\cause-lawyering intersection and the work of cause-lawyers in transitional contexts. It concludes by arguing that the case-study of cause-lawyers offers a rebuttal to the charge that transitional justice is just like ‘ordinary justice’. It also contends that, notwithstanding the durability of patriarchal power in transitional contexts, law remains a site of struggle, not acquiescence, and many of these cause-lawyers have and continue to exercise both agency and responsibility in ‘taking on’ that power.

The Republican Movement, 'Disappearing' and Framing the Past in Northern Ireland

Despite a rich body of research on the conflict and peace process in Northern Ireland, the ‘disappearances’ carried out by Republican armed groups have so far escaped scrutiny. In this article I examine how the Republican movement has framed the rationale behind ‘disappearing’ as a rational response to informing and as an example of historical continuity. In doing so, Republicans appear to attempt to confer legitimacy on their choice of target and normalize the use of the practice within a Republican framework. However, these rationales incorporate techniques of neutralization and attempts to contextualize the ‘disappearances’ in such a way as to distance the Irish Republican Army from agency. Such distancing speaks to a third, overarching rationale for ‘disappearing’: the avoidance of an embarrassment that has continued into the postconflict period. I consider why Republicans persist in claiming the ‘disappeared’ were legitimate targets, killed by a method for which there is historical precedent, when such framing left them open to criticism at a time when they were seeking to demonstrate that they had left violence behind. I conclude that Republican attempts to satisfy two audiences resulted in a gulf between their engagement in the process of recovering remains and their rhetoric surrounding this issue. In so doing, light is shed on some of the challenges the Republican movement faced in their transition away from violence. More broadly, the value of unpicking the framing of key actors in transitional processes is illuminated.

El marco constitucional vigente de la justicia transicional en Colombia

El artículo aborda el dilema de la justicia transicional desde la perspectiva del derecho constitucional vigente en Colombia. El propósito es presentar cómo dicho marco constitucional puede responder a la aplicación de la justicia transicional, en especial en relación con el problema de la responsabilidad penal de quienes cometieron atrocidades durante el conflicto armado, dentro de un proceso de diálogo y negociación. En otras palabras, el presente escrito está enfocado en presentar cuáles son los mecanismos previstos en la Constitución colombiana para resolver la tensión generada entre el derecho a la paz y a la justicia en un proceso transicional, cómo deben ser interpretados y cuáles son las implicaciones de sus usos.

Sobre el sujeto-víctima: configuraciones de una ciudadanía limitada

Una de las virtudes que se le han atribuido a la justicia transicional en los países donde se ha implementado es su capacidad de fortalecer las instituciones y contribuir con el afianzamiento de la democracia. Una de las maneras de potenciar tanto la democracia como el restablecimiento de las víctimas ha sido propiciar su participación dentro de los procesos de justicia transicional y otras políticas públicas cuya finalidad es propender por las garantías de sus derechos. No obstante, la participación democrática de las personas está mediada por la calidad que se les otorga a los sujetos que participan. El objeto de este texto es proponer la necesidad de tener un debate acerca de las implicaciones que trae la forma en que se concibe a las “víctimas” en su participación dentro de procesos de reparación. Este documento concluye poniendo en consideración algunos puntos que podrían hacer parte del debate sobre la conceptualización de víctima y su participación.