Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding

Abstract

This chapter begins with an overview of the emergence and expansion of peacebuilding, and examines the growing consensus that justice is essential to long-term peace. It highlights several tensions between the goals of peace-building and transitional justice which complicate the view that justice and peace are mutually reinforcing. The chapter shows how this view is further challenged by the emerging critique of liberal peacebuilding, a key aspect of which is concerned with how the externally devised and imposed nature of these interventions leaves limited space for local actors to construct their own vision of peace. Arguments for improving coordination between transitional justice and peace-building are based on several assumptions. Transitional justice interventions are inevitably the product of compromise, limited choice and conflicting policy agendas between and amongst international, national and local actors. Related arguments are emerging for peacebuilders and transitional justice practitioners to pay more attention to local and indigenous conflict resolution practices.