Making do with “Good Enough” Transitional Justice: Rethinking the Concept

Abstract:

Transitional justice was always bound to disappoint given the inevitable mismatch between the enormity of crimes and the paucity of remedies. Instead of piling new expectations on transitional justice or transferring frustrated hopes to transformative justice, it is high time that we learn to make do with “good enough” transitional justice. This talk explores what transitional justice can profitably learn from good enough governance. 

Bio:

Lars Waldorf is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights and York Law School. He reported on genocide trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2001) and ran Human Rights Watch’s field office in Rwanda (2002-4). He has authored numerous publications on both transitional justice and Rwanda. He has co-edited three books: Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011); Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence (Stanford University Press, 2010) and Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatants (SSRC, 2009). He also guest edited a special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights on “Legal Empowerment in Transitions” (2015).