I Book Review: Confronting Past Human Rights Violations: Justice vs. Peace in Times of Transition
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410502300415 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
assessment’ prior to privatisation, arguing that if the authorities are not able to
monitor the entire process of privatisation they should not press ahead with it.
Several authors stress the importance of the State’s duty to ‘protect’ as part of the tri-
partite typology of the obligations to respect, protect and fulfil. De Feyter and
Go´mez Isa in this respect feel that States would do well to focus more on this duty to
provide protection, particularly against abuses by private actors who take over
responsibility for service provision after privatisation. In addition, as pointed out by
for example Go´mez Isa and Kok, States should put in place an appropriate
regulatory mechanism to ensure the adequate provision of public services after
privatisation.
The book under review thus presents a discussion of a highly topical problem
that urgently requires attention from human rights researchers, human rights
bodies (such as the UN bodies) and human rights activists. By providing useful
background information and several interesting and thought-provoking viewpoints
it has set the stage for further debate.
Chandra Lekha Sriram,
Confronting Past Human Rights Violations: Justice
vs. Peace in Times of Transition
, Frank Cass, London and New York, 2004, 229
p., ISBN: 0-7146-5599-6*
Whenever the Council of Cardinals decides to elect a person of more than 75 years
of age to be the new pope, that pope is informally often called an ‘in-between pope’.
The counter-saying is that all popes are, in some way or another. ‘in-between popes’.
By way of analogy, one could argue that all regimes are ‘transitional’. The subtitle of
Chandra Lekha Sriram’s new book suggests that there do exist ‘times of transition’.
Again, one might ask: are not all times, times of transition? ‘Yet, it is common
practice nowadays to refer in particular to situations after the fall of a (military)
dictatorship as ‘‘transitional’’’.
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The newly established government will have to
make up its mind as to how to deal with the perpetrators of human rights violations
that occurred under the previous regime, Will they be prosecuted and tried by
regular courts or ad hoc courts? Will there be a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’
(or a combination of such a commission and a special court, as has recently occurred
in Sierra Leone)? What should prevail: justice or peace?
Chandra Lekha Sriram argues in her new book that the dichotomy between
‘peace’ and ‘justice’ is a false one and should be replaced by ‘ a continuum of
options with no definitive one ‘‘right’’ answer’ (p. 211). She bases this conclusion on
an examination of five ‘transitional’ cases: El Salvador, Argentina, Honduras, South
Africa, and Sri Lanka. These five cases have been selected from no less than 30 cases
that are briefly presented in chapter 2. All of the 30 cases have undergone serious
civil strife, suffered extensive human rights violations, undergone a transition of
some sort and faced serious demands for accountability. Sriram fails to make clear
on what grounds she has selected the five cases and none of the others. She did not
choose any of the eastern European cases ‘...both because the unique character of
many of the transitions meant that a serious threat to accountability virtually
dropped away and because the more commonly heard objection to prosecutions was
I Book Reviews
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 23/4 (2005) 699
* Peter R. Baehr is honorary professor of human rights, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
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The name of the highly regarded ‘Center for Transitional Justice’ in New York might even suggest
at first sight that there are at least two forms of justice: transitional and ‘normal’ justice.
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