How to Repair the Harm after Violent Conflict in Bosnia? Results of a Population-Based Survey
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Author | Elmar Weitekamp,Marta Valiñas,Stephan Parmentier |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410902700103 |
| Subject Matter | Part A: Article |
Netherlands Q uarterly of Human R ights, Vol. 27/1, 27-44, 2009.
© Netherlands I nstitute of Human Ri ghts (SIM), Printed in the Net herlands. 27
HOW TO REPAIR THE HARM
AFTER VIOLENT CONFLICT IN BOSNIA?
RESULTS OF A POPULATIONBASED SURVEY
S P, M V
and E W*
Abstract
Debates about ser ious human rights violations and internat ional crimes committed
in the past usually sta rt during times of political transit ion, that is when societies are
moving away from a non-democratic regim e and the new political elites are confronted
with the fundame ntal question on how to addre ss the heavy burden of their dark past.
is question was posed in most countries of Latin America in the 1980s, in all countries
of Central and Easter n Europe in the 1990s and in several countries in Africa and A sia
during the last decade. e issue of ‘dealing with the past’ or ‘transitional justice’ is most
oen managed by elites , national and international, and the vie ws and expectations of
the local popul ations are rarely taken into acc ount. Yet population-based research can
yield interesting insights into strategies and m echanisms for dealing with the crimes of
the past and for reconstructing the future. In this contribution we repor t on the ndings
of a population-ba sed research in Bosnia in 2006 that dealt with several issue s of post-
conict justi ce. e focus is on the iss ue of reparation for the harm inicted, how it is
perceived by the p opulation in Bosnia, what for ms it may take, and how to feed it into
policy-making at the national and the inte rnational level.
* Stephan Parmenti er i s profe ssor of s ociology of crime, law and human rig hts at t he Catholic
University of Leuven, Be lgium, and the head of the Depa rtment of Crimina l Law and Criminolog y.
Marta Valiñas is research a ssociate at the Cathol ic University of Leuven where she i s completing
her doctoral disser tation on ‘Restoring Justice: Broa dening the focus of legal responses to mass
atrocities? Case-stu dy on Bosnia an d Herzego vina’ wit h funds from the Re search Cou ncil of the
Catholic University of Leuven. Elmar Weitekamp i s currently professor of vict imology and
restorative just ice at the universitie s of Tübingen, Germany, and Le uven. e authors would like t o
thank Dr. Uwe Ewald (I nternational Cr iminal Tribun al for ex-Yugoslavia, but commenting i n his
individua l capacity), Professor Joha n Goethals (Cathol ic University of Leuven), Professor M anfred
Nowak (University of Vienn a) and Professor Julian Rober ts (University of Oxford) for their ca reful
reading and in sightful comments on prev ious versions of the empirica l part of the survey. e na l
responsibilit y for the presentat ion and the inter pretation of the res ults lies solely with the authors .
All interne t sites were last accessed on 16 Janua ry 2009.
Stephan Parment ier, Marta Valiñas and E lmar Weitekamp
28 Intersenti a
1. INTRODUCTION
Debates about gross violations of human rig hts committed in the past usually start
during times of t ransition, that is when societies are moving away f rom an autocratic
regime to more democratic forms of government. At that time the new elites are openly
confronted with the fundamental question of how to address the heavy burden of their
dark past . Questions of th is nature were posed repeatedly over the last two decades,
in Latin America, in Central and Eastern Europe, a nd in various countries in Africa
and Asia. ese problems relate p ar excelle nce to two notions that are sometimes
used intercha ngeably, namely on the one hand ‘transitional justice’,1 dened a s ‘the
full r ange of processes and mecha nisms associated with a society’s attempts to come
to term s with a legacy of large-scale past abuse s, in order to ensure accountability,
serve justice and achieve reconciliation’,2 and on the other hand ‘post-conict justice’,
comprising two related mea nings, one referring to ‘retributive a nd restorative justice
with respect to huma n depredations that occur during violent conict s’ (in other
words mostly dea ling with t he past), the other referri ng to ‘restoring and en hancing
justice systems which have failed or become weakened as a result of internal conict s’
(the future oriented dimension).3
Whatever the origins and t he outcomes of a con ict one certai nty always stands
out, namely that serious harm is inicted upon victim s. Pa rticularly in cases of
international crimes – genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – this harm
can be very broad and usually goes far beyond individual damage to extend to a larger
group or community. e key question is then if it is possible to repair in a ny way the
harm inic ted in the case of international crimes , and how? As argued elsewhere
the issue of reparation for victims of gross and systematic human rights violations has given
rise to i ntense debates at the national and the international level. e se developments are
illustrate d and shaped by a number of wel l-known examples, includ ing the compensation
schemes for victims of the Holocau st and othe r Nazi atro cities, the reparation measu res
for the First Nations in C anada and for the aborigi nals in Australia , and the erce debates
about compensation for slavery and c olonialism at the World Conference against Racism
in Durban.4
1 Kritz, N. (ed.), Transitional Ju stice: Ho w Emerg ing Democ racies Reckon w ith Forme r Regim es, 3
vols., US Institut e of Pea ce, Washing ton, 1995; and Siegel, R., ‘Transitional Justice. A Decade of
Debate and Exp erience’, Human Rights Quar terly, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1998, pp. 431–454.
2 United Nations, Security Council, e rul e of law and transitional justice in conict and post-conic t
societies, Report of the Secretar y-General to the Secur ity Cou ncil, S /2004/616, 23 August 2004,
p. 4.
3 Bassiouni, C. (ed.), Post-Conict Ju stice, Transnational P ublishers, Ardsley, 200 2, p. xv.
4 Parmentier, S. and De Feyter, K., ‘Int roduction’, in: De Feyter, K., Par mentier, S., Bossuy t, M. and
Lemmens, P. (eds), Out of t he Ashes. Repara tion for Victims o f Gross and Systema tic Human Rights
Violations, Intersentia , Antwerp, 2005, pp. 1–7, at p. 1.
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