INTRODUCTION

Victims who survive a period of widespread, systematic, and atrocious violence run the risk of transitional justice (TJ) being but a brief interruption in the injustices they suffer, and that the justice it promises will be too vague to truly fulfil the promise of a transformation from one condition to another. Such promises of change may be from violence to peace, from dictatorship to democracy, or from a society with grave and systematic violations of human rights to one in which human rights are recognized and respected. The very meaning of justice in the context of transitional processes supported and given legitimacy by the international community is still very much a matter for debate, despite continuing to be the sine qua non of transition. The temporality and duration of transitional justice can mean anything if the process is focused merely on re-establishing order, “pacification”, and achieving what has been called negative peace that is limited to the ending hostilities and the prevention of an early return to violence (Mani 2002, 12). Its meaning is something entirely different, however, when the goal is a positive peace that emphasizes the consolidation of peace through political and structural reforms that prevent violence in the long-term, including the cessation of hostilities as one of its prerequisites (Mani 2005; Galtung 1998, 15 – 18).

Furthermore, the goals and purposes of the TJ process also reflect other things beyond a mere demand for recognized and enforceable justice.For example, the short-term goal of a cessation of hostilities or pacification may be incompatible with, or present an obstacle to, structural reforms that positive peace or an inclusive democracy may require. It may be that the search for negative peace and a suspension of violence requires granting concessions to those who perpetrated that violence or benefited from the human rights violations that occurred during it, if they are in positions of power during the process and are not inclined to lose or to risk their privileges, sacrifice their interests, or answer for all that they have done. In this context of concessions, hostilities may be provisionally suspended and deferred rather than brought to an end, and the legacy of violence may threaten to impose itself on the transitional process and the establishment of order in its wake, thereby continuing the violence or engendering its eventual renewal and intensification.