A context-based model for framing political victimhood: Experiences from Northern Ireland and the Basque Country
| Author | Amaia Álvarez Berastegi,Kevin Hearty |
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0269758018782237 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
A context-based model
for framing political
victimhood: Experiences
from Northern Ireland
and the Basque Country
Amaia A
´lvarez Berastegi
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Kevin Hearty
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Abstract
All societies moving towards peace must establish reparation measures for victims of political
violence. This is not an easy task, however; political victimhood is a controversial concept by itself
and all victims of this type are mixed up with general politics from both the past and the present. In
divided societies, such as Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, controversies about the
definition of political victimhood reproduce old divisions from the past. Drawing on these two case
studies, this research project gathers together some initial thoughts on the conceptualisation of
political victimhood with regard to three different models: the harm-, blame- and context-based
models. The primary contribution of the article lies in the formulation of the third model, the
context-based framework.
Keywords
Victims of political violence, Basque Country, Northern Ireland, transitional justice, conflict
transformation
Corresponding author:
Amaia A
´lvarez Berastegi, Faculty of Social Science and Communication – University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU,
Barrio Sarriena s/n, Leioa – Bizkaia, Spain.
Email: amaia.alvarez@ehu.eus
International Review of Victimology
2019, Vol. 25(1) 19–36
ªThe Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0269758018782237
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Introduction
The demand for victim-centred policies has increased along with the development of transitional
justice and the need to deal with the past. In societies emerging from conflict or political transition
related to systemic human rights violations, the needto put victims at the centre of the politics of the
past goes unquestioned (Findlay, 2009; Robins, 2011). All the parties involved in conflict, peace-
building andtransitional justice agreeon this. The root of the problem,however, lies in how to define
these victims, primarily who should be includedor excluded from this definition. Like other regions
emerging from a transition towards peace, Northern Ireland and the Basque Country,
1
two cases of
divided societies and conflicteddemocracies (Nı´Aola´in and Ca mpbell, 2005), also fac e this political
controversy about how to define victims. This article analyses three different models for conceptua-
lising political victimhood in divided societies based on these two case studies and gives shape to a
new framework for approaching political victimhood: the context-based model.
The debates about how to deal with the past in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country remain
a burning issue in the process of conflict transformation, in which the past has become war by other
means. Although several mechanisms have been implemented, a shared and comprehensive strat-
egy for solving legacy issues is yet to be negotiated. The competing narratives about the past and
the lack of a shared strategy for the future constitute some of the reasons for this situation. The
status of victims of the conflict is also a major concern in both cases. Rather than there being
sufficient buy-in to the general term ‘victim of the conflict’, there have been persistent politicised
attempts to qualify or question the victimhood of some by attaching prefixes such as ‘innocent’,
‘real’ and ‘deserving’ to the term victim (Dawson, 2014 ). Whether or not victims have been
involved previously in the conflict is critical to understanding the prevalence of such prefixes and
their accompanying narratives against the ‘equation’ of victims. The construction of victimhood
and the debates around it are currently reproducing the political divisions from the past in these two
divided societies.
Thus, in both Northern Ireland and the Basque Country, victims are caught in the middle of
these broader political debates on how to define the past and how to agree on a strategy for the
future. The confrontation between narratives that define the past as a problem of ‘terrorism’ and
those that define it as a problem of political violence remains strong in both places. In general
terms, the narrative that frames the past as political violence supports an inclusive definition of
victim based on the harm caused to the latter, whereas the narratives that understand the past as
‘terrorism’ argue for a less inclusive definition of victim that imposes limitations based on blame.
The aim of this article is to shed light on how these two models conceptualise victimhood and to
propose a new framework, a context-based model, which might help to overcome the divisions
from the past by theorising political victimhood from a new perspective. The article will first give
an overview of the transition from conflict to peace in the case studies. It will then analyse the
framework for conceptualising political victimhood and, finally, it will explore the different
conceptual models for dealing with political victimhood in divided societies, emphasising the
contribution of the proposed context-based framework.
Victims and political transition in Northern Ireland
and the Basque Country
In their 2000 study, Beristain and Rovira calculated the impact of violence with regard to the
number of killings in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. They noted that the impact in the
20 International Review of Victimology 25(1)
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