Gender-Aware and Place-Based Transitional Justice in Guatemala
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663917718050 |
| Author | Stephan Parmentier,Tine Destrooper |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Gender-Aware and
Place-Based Transitional
Justice in Guatemala:
Altering the Opportunity
Structures for Post-Conflict
Women’s Mobilization
Tine Destrooper
New York University, USA
Stephan Parmentier
KU Leuven, Belgium
Abstract
Place-based approaches to transitional justice, which foreground victim participation,
have become increasingly popular in the last decade. The assumption is that these
approaches enhance legitimacy, increase the local relevance of interventions, and
empower victims. However, the causal mechanisms by which this alleged empowerment
takes place, are not usually studied in great detail. This article examines whether altering
the opportunity structures of (germinal) civil society organizations is one of the ways by
which this empowering effect might take hold. The authors argue that in Guatemala, the
transitional justice process, and in particular the truth commission, did indeed signifi-
cantly alter the opportunity structures of grassroots indigenous women’s groups, most
notably by providing these groups with support to develop their own agenda and with
access to ‘elite allies’. Yet the fieldwork performed hitherto would also advise against
treating localized and participatory approaches to transitional justice as a panacea, for
even if a genuine bottom-up approach is promising, the ongoing institutionalization of the
field of transitional justice makes adequate implementation of such an approach difficult;
and especially in cases where victims face intersectional discrimination positive effects
may be slow to materialize.
Corresponding author:
Tine Destrooper, New York University, 139 MacDougal Street, New York, NY 10012, USA.
Email: td722@nyu.edu
Social & Legal Studies
2018, Vol. 27(3) 323–344
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663917718050
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Keywords
Civil society, Guatemala, localization, place-based interventions, transitional justice,
women’s movements
Introduction
Transitional justice refers to the range of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms that are
utilizedto address the legacyof massive human rights abuses.Among others, thesemechan-
isms include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations to victims, and institu-
tional reforms. It is through an integrated approach that transitional justice seeks to ensure
accountability,serve justice, and achievereconciliation while alsomore broadly contribut-
ing to societalstability (UN SecurityCouncil, 2011).Among both scholars andpractitioners
there has been a growing concern to develop these interventions in ways thatare rooted in
their respective contexts (Orentlicher, 2007; Robins, 2012, 2013; Teitel, 2014; Weinstein,
2014). The emergence of a broad range of concepts with roots in various disciplines (like
‘transitional justice from below’ (McEvoy and McGregor, 2008), ‘process -pluralism’
(Menkel-Meadow, 2014), victimological approaches(McGonigle, 2012), and localization
studies (Shaw and Waldorf, 2010)) is illustrative of the increasing popularity of ‘place-
based’ approachesto transitional justice and the growing debate surrounding them.
Parallel to this growing concern with place-based transitional justice interventions
emerged a focus on gendered (post-)conflict dynamics (e.g. Security Council Resolution
1325). The fact that many transitional justice interventions contributed to the margin-
alization and invisibility of everyday violence perpetrated against women, notably vio-
lence occurring in families and communities, eventually led to an approach which seeks
to reconceptualize justice in ways that acknowledge women’s lived experiences and
which recognizes the harm that disproportionally affects women (Schmid, 2015) while
examining how these interventions might become more relevant for women, for example
by capturing the range and plurality of harm experienced by women and offering gen-
dered forms of redress (Bell and O’Rourke, 2007; Franke, 2006; Henry, 2014 ; Nı´ Aolaı´n
et al., 2011; Nı´ Aolaı´n and Turner, 2007).
This article commends the growing attention to place-based and gender-aware transi-
tional justice processes but asks how these developments can contribute in practice to the
specific and general goals of trans itional justice processes. To this en d, the authors
examine the social movement literature and more specifically the notion of ‘political
opportunity structures’ (see below). They argue that this literature can help us understand
how place-based and gender-aware transitional justice interventions engender positive
outcomes, and in this regard, they analyze the actions of Guatemalan women’s organi-
zations which built on this increased awareness of gendered and local dynamics to
develop their own agenda. Without asserting that these specific cases are representative
of all indigenous organizations or that the transitional justice process was the only factor
shaping the actions of these organizations, the authors use these crucial cases to highlight
just how transitional justice can potentially alter the opportunity structures of civil
society organizations (CSOs). Yet fieldwork also shows that in the end there are other
contextual factors – along with CSOs’ own agency – which make it hard to predict just
324 Social & Legal Studies 27(3)
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