Transitional Justice and Social Change

Abstract

This article questions whether transitional justice can deliver social change. The author discusses the importance of re-assessing expectations so that transitional justice processes and the legal framework that drives them, including international human rights law, are used to achieve what they are able to deliver. By classifying social change in three categories, namely: ordinary changes, structural changes and fundamental changes, the author argues that a fundamental social change happens when social struggle is able to put forward a new dominant ideology inspired by radically different values to those that allowed the repression or the conflict to take place. While it is not realistic to expect transitional justice to deliver development, democracy, rule of law or peace, the author argues, transitional justice, when properly conducted, can indeed contribute to deliver fundamental change but it cannot deliver it on its own.

Keywords: Transitional justice, Social change, Ideology, International human rights law