Roundtable: Transitional Justice in Latin America – Book Launch

This new book – co-authored and co-edited by Elin Skaar, Jemima García-Godos, and Cath Collins, addresses current developments in transitional justice in Latin America – effectively the first region to undergo concentrated transitional justice experiences in modern times. Using a comparative approach, the book examines trajectories in truth, justice, reparations, and amnesties in nine countries emerging from periods of massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law. Applying a common analytical framework, the book provides a qualitative and comparative analysis of the transitional justice experiences of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. More specifically, the book investigates to what extent there has been a shift from impunity towards accountability for past human rights violations in Latin America. The book assesses how the quality, timing and sequencing of transitional justice mechanisms, along with the context in which they appear, have mattered for the nature and impact of transitional justice processes in the region.

Following the presentation of the book, this roundtable addresses the central questions regarding how transitional justice travels: To what extent have the lessons learned from the TJ protagonist region of Latin America travelled to the rest of the world? Narrowing the focus to the criminal prosecution part of transitional justice, the roundtable explores the following hot topics in the current TJ debate: How has the changing international context – specifically international law and regional and international courts, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice (ICC) influenced this development? Why do we see a backlash against transitional justice efforts in Africa? What are the main challenges for countries still in conflict, like the Middle East, with respect to human rights violations?