Transitional Justice is inextricably linked with the notion of human rights, therefore should be alienated from any partisan politics, said Pablo de Greiff Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, on Friday. “Transitional Justice is defeated when it becomes a partisan political effort, it is not an instrument of turn taking, it is not an instrument by which we build ourselves, it is now our turn to benefit our supporters and try to harm our opponents,” he said.
He also stressed the importance of intent and civil trust as propellants of bringing about transitional justice in a post conflict situation along with institutional strengthening. He was speaking to an audience of academics, activists, defense personnel, public servants and political representatives at the Lakshman Kadiragamar Centre. The presentation was organized by the Lakshman Kadiragamar Institute.
The four measures of transitional justice complement one another. It is important to establish not just one of them but all of them. “The fields truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence are not like items in a menu from which people can pick and chose but rather that they are supposed to be part of comprehensive policy.
The four components of transitional justice must be understood as complementary measures, not as antagonistic measures or mutually exclusive alternatives but rather as part of a whole.”
The importance of taking the four components of transitional justice as a whole is “the temptation to think that these are options of which choices can be made. Further more these are items of which trade off relations can be established,” he said.
The commitment of the governments and a proactive society is the sine qua non for the sustainability of transitional justice, he stressed.
Answering a question about the relationship between the institutional strengths and the success of the transitional justice programs he said that the quality of the reparation programs could depend on institutional capacity.