Victims and Transitional Justice
| Author | Kirsten McConnachie,Kieran McEvoy |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663913499062 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Victims and Transitional
Justice: Voice, Agency
and Blame
Kieran McEvoy
Queens University Belfast, UK
Kirsten McConnachie
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
This article explores the construction of victimhood in transitional societies. Drawn
from fieldwork in a dozen jurisdictions as well as elements of criminological, feminist,
sociological, philosophical and postcolonial literature, the article focuses in particular on
how victimhood is interpreted and acted upon in transitional contexts. It explores the
ways in which victims’ voice and agency are realised, impeded or in some cases co-opted
in transitional justice. It also examines the role of blame in the construction of victim-
hood. In particular, it focuses upon the ways in which the importance of blame may ren-
der victimhood contingent upon ‘blamelessness’, encourage hierarchies between
deserving and undeserving victims and require the reification of blameworthy perpetra-
tors. The article concludes by suggesting that the increased voice and agency associated
with the deployment of rights discourses by victims comes at a price – a willingness to
acknowledge the rights and humanity of the ‘other’ and to be subject to the same
respectful critical inquiry as other social and political actors in a post-conflict society.
Keywords
Agency, blame, hierarchy, innocence, transitional justice, victims, voice
Corresponding author:
Kieran McEvoy, Scho ol of Law, Queens Unive rsity Belfast, 27-3 0 University Square , Belfast BT7 1NN,
Northern Ireland, U K.
Email: k.mcevoy@qub.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
22(4) 489–513
ªThe Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663913499062
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Introduction
The importance of victims and victimhood to transitional justice has been the subject of
significant scholarly and policy attention in recent years (e.g. Roldan, 2012; Sriram et al.,
2013; UN Secretary General, 2011). At the level of the international tribunals (the Inter-
national Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda – hereafter ICC, ICTY and ICTR,
respectively), there is an ever-growing literature on victim-related issues such as repara-
tions, restorative justice, procedural justice, the witness/victim division, outreach and
education programmes and other elements of what is now a fairly well-established
template as to how to manage victims as part of these major institutions (Findlay and
Henman, 2012; Koomen, 2013; McCarthy, 2012; McGonigle Leyh, 2011; Ramirez-
Barrat, 2011). In a similar fashion, hybrid tribunals (involving international and local
legal actors), truth commissions, community-based or ‘bottom-up’ programmes and the
myriad of other variants of transitional justice almost always seek to underline their bona
fides by demonstrating their ‘victim-centredness’. As one of the authors has argued
previously (Mallinder and McEvoy, 2011; McEvoy, 2007), sometimes such claims are
significantly overplayed in the pursuit of larger political or social goals. What is inter-
esting for current purposes however is the extent to which victims are central to the
process of what Barker (2001) has termed self-legitimation. For those who work in and
seek to justify the institutions of transitional justice, victims are routinely deployed as
part of the ‘language, etiquette and rituals of self-legitimation’ (Barker, 2001: 6). Justice
or support for victims are often the reasons advanced by lawyers, judges, psychologists,
human rights activists and others for their involvement in transitional justice. They are
sometimes practical but certainly always symbolic beneficiaries of the ‘legitimation
work’ (Thumala et al., 2011) that is required to account for the enormous financial,
political, legal and psychological effort to deal with the consequences of past violence
in many of these societies. Without what Walklate (2007) has called the ‘imagined
victim’, more abstract justifications for transitional justice (such as securing justice,
deterring others from atrocity, upholding ‘the rule of law’ determining the ‘truth’ about
the past) might appear just too intangible.
By way of background to the fieldwork, almost 300 interviews have been conducted
by the authors in a range of conflict-affected and transitional jurisdictions since 1995.
1
Those interviewed have included victims and victims’ organisations, ex-combatants,
lawyers, judges, politicians, human rights and political activists. In every context in
which we have conducted research, debates concerning the rights and needs of ‘victims’
and how victims have been affected by different styles of transitional justice (e.g. the
release of prisoners, amnesties, international or local prosecutions and truth recovery)
have been keenly contested elements of the local polity.
2
Broadly, all of this research was informed by a view that that ‘structured-focused
comparisons’ (Zartman, 2005) based on semi-structured interviews with key actors
provide a balance that allows for a nuanced grasp of the local and the potential for what
Merton (1968) termed ‘mid range theorising’. Indigenous researchers were appointed in
each jurisdiction, usually on the basis of their close working knowledge of the local con-
text. With their assistance (and that of the secondary literature), purposeful sampling
490 Social & Legal Studies 22(4)
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