‘Let Me Tell You’: Transitional Justice, Victimhood and Dealing with a Contested Past
| Author | Cheryl Lawther |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0964663920974072 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
‘Let Me Tell You’:
Transitional Justice,
Victimhood and Dealing
with a Contested Past
Cheryl Lawther
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Abstract
This article explores the intersection between the politics and construction of victim-
hood in transitional societies and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation
of hierarchies of truth. It explores how, in a context of contested victimhood and an
unresolved past, the ‘political currency’ of victimhood may lead to the domination and
embellishment of certain voices and narratives and the concurrent silencing of others.
As this article will then demonstrate, when applied to the debate on truth recovery, the
capturing of victims’ voice and agency can manifest in a damaging ‘truth as trumps’
dynamic and recourse to ‘whataboutery’ in which one call for truth or the recovery
of truth as significant to one side of the community is countered by that of a more
‘significant’ or more ‘important’ truth on the part of the other. The paper argues for the
inculcation of a culture political generosity in transitional contexts as a way to begin to
ameliorate these challenges.
Keywords
Agency, dealing with the past, politics of victimhood, transitional justice, truth recovery,
voice, victims
Corresponding author:
Cheryl Lawther, School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, Main Site Tower, University Square, Belfast,
County Antrim, Northern Ireland BT7 1NN, UK.
Email: c.lawther@qub.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663920974072
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2021, Vol. 30(6) 890–912
Introduction
Increasing academic and practitioner attention has been paid to highlighting the voice
and agency of victims in transitional justice processes. The rationale is two-fold. First, it
is a response to the argument that transitional justice and efforts to deal with the legacy of
a violent past are ‘victim-centred’ processes. The United Nations (UN) (2010) has, for
example, discussed ensuring ‘the centrality of victims in the design and implementation
of transitional justice processes and mechanisms’, while the Prosecutor of the Interna-
tional Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda has claimed that ‘the sole raison d’etre of
the Court’s activities [ ...] is the victims and the justice they deserve’ (cited in Kendall
and Nouwen, 2014: 239). What Walklate (2007) has called the ‘imagined victim’ – the
innocent, vulnerable victim who is deserving of justice has hence provided the legit-
imizing basis for prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, memorialization, and the
plethora of other measures deployed in transitional justice contexts (see for example:
Fletcher, 2015; Hayner, 2011; Waterhouse, 2009). Indeed, victims serve a key practical
and symbolic role in what Barker (2001: 6) has termed the ‘self-legitimation’ of almost
all of those who work in the field of transitional justice (McEvoy and McConnachie,
2012). Second, is a growing body of literature which attests to the use or silencing of
victims’ voices in socially discomforting ways. Such appropriation of victims’ voices
may strip victims of their agency, undermine their experience of hurt and harm and
reinforce a sense of powerlessness (Weinstein, 2014). In its most problematic variant,
victims’ voices may be managed, co-opted and instrumentalized for political ends by
those ‘transitional justice entrepreneurs’ claiming to speak ‘on behalf’ of victims (Chris-
tie, 1977; Madlingozi, 2010).
This article seeks to develop this nascent body of scholarship to consider the inter-
section between the politics and construction of victimhood, the exercise or capture of
victims’ voice and agency and the use of truth recovery as a platform for the creation of
politically calibrated and socially damaging hierarchies of truth. The article draws on the
case study of Northern Ireland to explore these dynamics. Indeed, its title draws inspira-
tion from an interview with a vict im of the Northern Ireland confli ct who, in their
opening remarks stated, ‘I’ll start by telling you about my moral authority to speak on
this subject this morning ...’ (Interview, 2 March 2017, interview 1). As is well docu-
mented elsewhere, there is a long-standing debate on establishing a formal process of
truth recovery in Northern Ireland and critical interrogation of existing methods of truth
recovery (see for example: Bell, 2003; Lawther, 2015; McEvoy and Bryson, 2016).
Clustered around the binary opposites of ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ victims, the politiciza-
tion of victimhood has dogged efforts to deal with the past. The legal definition of ‘who’
is a victim, proposals for the use of an amnesty or limited immunity from prosecution,
a ‘Recognition Payment’ of £12,000 payable to all victims of the conflict, a pension for
the injured and the release of funding for legacy inquests in the coroner’s courts have
all succumbed to bitter contests over who can, or should, be considered a ‘deserving’ or
‘undeserving’ victim of the conflict. In each instance, the silencing and essentialism of
certain voices, the politically expedient use of personal narratives of trauma and
atrocity and the attempt to assert a ‘truer’ version of the past has dominated public
and political discourse.
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Lawther
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